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

Anonymous asked: Prompt: les amis princess protection program au

*Aaron Burr voice*  Sure!  So it took me a long-ass time to write this because I saw PPP like once, like ten years ago, and I just now had the time to google it and brush up.  As payment for the delay, it’s SEVEN PAGES.  Also I wrote this at two in the morning and I haven’t looked over it since, so…  I wandered off from the movie plot.  Sorry.

• Prince Gabriel Alexandrè Enjolras Apollinaire—he usually opts out of the lengthy full name for just ‘Enjolras’, to the ongoing dismay of his entire staff—is literally getting crowned as king of the small country Rive Lune when Inquisiteur Javert, the right-hand man of the neighboring Rive Astre, comes crashing through the door.  Turns out being extremely determined to transform a hundred-year monarchy into a democracy makes the local dictators edgy.  Despite his best efforts to the contrary, Enjolras is (quite literally) hauled away by Monsieur Valjean, a member of the Prince Protection Program.  His mother and the queen of Rive Lune, Her Royal Majesty Juliette Ameliè Lamarque Apollinaire, is not so lucky.

• Enjolras puts up a very legitimate fight against being ‘packed off like so much spare luggage,’ as he puts it in his lengthy tirade. The PPP has never had to handle such an…opinionated prince—normally, they’re so shocky from an attempt on their life that they don’t question much.  Enjolras is something else.  He spins such a compelling speech about personal responsibility and care of the people and my country that, honestly?  They almost go for it.  And then Valjean clears his throat and politely reminds everyone of the situation, and Enjolras is packed off to America without further ado (and over his continuting protests) because Valjean has that effect on people.

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yol-ande asked: Oh oh oh, I saw you ship Damerons, could you write something ridiculously fluffy with Finn being badass, while Rey and Poe are all starry-eyed over it? This fandom needs more Finn love. (And I need all of the fluff)

Okay I’m so sorry for the delay but HERE.  Also, bear with me, there is in fact some fluff here, but this kind of turned into a crash course in my favorite tropes, so the fluff is…at the end. We’ve got dramatic rescues!  We’ve got canon references!  We’ve got hurt/comfort after interrogation!  We’ve got the Damerons being stupid in love with each other!  We’ve got Rey being deadly as fuck even severely compromised!  We’ve got Finn the patron saint of revolution!  We’ve got disguises and drugs and sweary droids!  And eventually we’ve got fluff.  Also this is like…twelve pages, pushing 6K, I have no excuse.  I’ve also decided that Shinedown’s Cut The Cord is the new theme song for the Stormtrooper revolution.

Poe wasn’t sure how long they had been there—definitely days, but probably not more than a dozen. Probably.  It was hard to tell, with irregular ration schedules, and there were no other prisoners in their dark cell to ask.  The brig was far from the hull of the vast First Order battlecruiser, too, and although the impenetrable black wouldn’t have helped with timekeeping, he wished they could at least see the stars.

They didn’t seem interested in him, but they had taken Rey from him three times since they were first captured—all his injuries were from trying to keep them from taking her, against her direct orders.  The first time, she had walked, as graceful and serene as a dead moon, between the Stormtroopers.  She had been weak with the cuffs on her wrists, cutting her off from the Force, clean and crisp as a lightsaber slash, but she was strong.  They had returned her to him bruised and exhausted, wilted with it, and she had bared all her teeth at him proudly and snarled that they would never get answers out of her.  

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Anonymous asked: oooooh, i would love a exr shortie where e has to teach r how to dance and it's very frustrating and they feel thINGS, please?

*hides face* Oh my God, it’s been like a MONTH, I am so sorry, but HERE.  There is dancing and feelings and kissing and Enjolras actually having a social life because Courfeyrac forces him to.  Also, I seem to have a tendency to write ‘getting their shit together’ ficlets so if you want…not that, feel free to ask.  And if you want the reverse of this where Grantaire teaches Enjolras to dance, it is here.

Enjolras goes to clubs.  It’s not especially common knowledge, because he’s usually too busy, but whenever Courfeyrac feels like it’s necessary, he’ll drag Enjolras out to a nightclub, pour a few shots into him, and turn him loose for a few hours with instructions to not think too much.  This time, it’s a group outing, all of Les Amis laughing and tactile with alcohol, hands on arms and cheeks flushed with the triumph of their latest protest.  

Joly, giggly with his second rum and coke, is the one to start the dancing, pushing Musichetta and Bousset onto the dance floor ahead of him.  The three of them fit together like puzzle pieces, Musichetta’s petite body pressed back against Joly’s chest and Bousset’s broad shoulders behind the pair of them.  They’ve clearly done this before, because Bousset and Musichetta know just how to move so that Joly can dance without aggravating his limp.  It’s fluid and sensual, Musichetta’s head tipped back on Joly’s shoulder and her smile dazzling up at her boys, and Enjolras feels the brief pause around him, the rest of them caught up in the trio’s giddy joy.

“Aw, they’re cute,” Cosette says, and Éponine smirks, finishes her scotch, and pinches Marius hard in the side.  He yelps and flails—not a graceful man at the best of times, and less so with alcohol—but gets the hint, shyly offering his hand to Cosette and letting her tug him onto the floor.  Éponine is still snickering when she darts out herself, bouncing and coiling like a ribbon in the dim club lights.

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Anonymous asked: I saw that you were open to fic requests. Do you have any Amis Mutant!AU headcanons?

I HAVE ALL THE MUTANT!AU HEADCANONS.  Listen, children, Auntie Moran has been an X-Men devotee since she was very wee, I have mutant AU headcanons for basically everything I’ve ever seen.  I think we’ll just do headcanons for this rather than a fic, though, you can hit me up later if you want actual plot.

Okay so I’m thinking that the Mutant Registration Act is going to have to be the big issue Les Amis are protesting–they’ve got to have something to be against, it’s Les Amis for God’s sake.  And I’m thinking that a number of them are in a peculiar position because a lot of them are from wealthy upper-class families and have invisible mutations, so they could have just gone on with their lives without ever telling a lie.  This is probably vaguely modern–hell, maybe the X-Men are kicking around somewhere.  Aaaaanyway, here, it got long.

• Enjolras can glow.  Actually it’s called electromagnetic manipulation, and he can do more than glow, but that’s the most common manifestation–when he’s impassioned or excited or angry, it’s as if particles of sunlight coalesce around his skin, a harsh and brilliant golden-white halo.  He can control it, but it takes some concentration.  With some practice, he learned to do other things with light, like setting off bursts of light to catch the attention of a crowd or throwing lightning-bright flashes from his hands to baffle the police and hide their escape.  It’s beautiful, watching him speak at the Musain or at a protest, his whole body outlined in not-quite-blinding light so that there isn’t a single shadow on him, like an angel or an ancient god.  It’s why Grantaire started calling him Apollo–god of the sun, of rapture and beauty, of eloquence and elegance.  It drives Enjolras up the wall, but Grantaire persists and Enjolras’ light is all the brighter in the heat of his anger.

• Combeferre has a small psychic ability, although not in the sense of reading minds.  He can share senses, specifically vision–look through the eyes of another animal.  He likes moths and butterflies for this, because as calm and logical as he usually is, Combeferre is creative and loves art and moths and butterflies have five color receptors rather than three, they can see a whole spectrum humans can only dream of.  When he’s drunk enough or exhausted enough, Combeferre will sit with his head on Courfeyrac’s shoulder and try to describe the other colors he can see through their eyes.  (He has absolutely never started crying about it, and anything Courfeyrac says to the contrary is nothing but lies and slander.)

• Courfeyrac is an empath.  I think I’ve used that one before, but I am VERY committed to Courfeyrac being an empath, y’all can fight me at dawn on that.  He’s not much good at projecting, he can only manage it in a moment of strong emotion, although once he does manage it, he can swamp everyone around him and send them reeling into hysterical sobs or blind rage or, on one memorable occasion involving Combeferre, pure blazing lust.  (They don’t talk about that one much, it’s a bit of a Noodle Incident, but suffice it to say Enjolras reacted…poorly, when they came out of it and he realized he’d kissed Grantaire.  It was a messy week until he apologized for his reaction.)  Courfeyrac is much better at receptive empathy, at reading the people around him, and he’s a master at balancing it all, knowing which emotions are his and which aren’t.  It does make being around Enjolras a little exhausting, with all that fiery passion roaring through him all the time–Combeferre, much steadier in nature, is a good balance, though.  That’s part of the reason Courfeyrac likes Gavroche so much.  He’s not a complex kid, he’s very direct and up front with his thoughts and emotions.  It’s restful to be around, unless you’re on his hit list.

• Bousset’s mutation is probability manipulation.  Nothing so large-scale as the Scarlet Witch–he’s not going to be rewriting reality any time soon, nor eradicating mutant-kind–and instead of being able to shoot bolts, he can sort of attach it to people like a curse.  It’s relatively shortlived, but he can grab someone, skin-to-skin, and attach his power to them for a while, giving them ‘good luck’ or ‘bad luck’ depending on his preference.  Problem is, entropy demands a balance, so he deals with the backlash–if he makes someone lucky, he deals with correspondingly strong bad luck until his power falls away from them, and vice versa.  He’s always having runs of really terrible luck because he’ll tag (he calls it ‘tagging’ someone) his friends with little drips and dabs of good luck whenever they’re having a bad day or a rough week or he’s feeling particularly affectionate, and little drips and dabs add up really quick when you’re doling them out to almost a dozen people.  (He did very quietly make an arrangement with pretty much everyone except Joly and Musichetta, tagged all of Les Amis with bad luck, waited for his luck to turn up, and then went and asked the pair of them if they wanted to date him.  They haven’t let him forget it yet.  They said yes.)

• Joly’s a healer, of course.  More specifically, he can alter physical functions on a molecular level through physical contact, which means that he can do anything from cure cancer to cause someone’s body to break down where they’re standing.  He’s a little wary about physical contact, consequently–it’s never happened, but he worries that if he’s touching someone when he’s angry or scared he might hurt them.  But he always kisses Bousset’s bumps and scrapes better–literally–and he aced the fuck out of his anatomy and physiology classes.  He loves medicine, really loves it, because yeah, he can make all this stuff happen at hyperspeed, but it’s so cool to learn how it works.  He can’t heal himself, though–he could, but there’s a mental block that he can’t get around, because when he first broke his leg and tried to heal it, it didn’t work, so he’s convinced himself it’s impossible.  The limp doesn’t bother him, most of the time, but every once in a while he sits there and chews on his lower lip and wonders what went wrong.

• Musichetta can draw the future.  She’s a talented artist, and she likes to work in paints when she has the money–some of her paintings were hung in a gallery and Bousset drenched her in good luck that first time, so she does pretty well for herself, and can work in oil paints more often now.  She and Grantaire have very different styles–he has a warm pre-Impressionistic style, real and living and firelit, where she paints with sharp contrasts and comic-book-esque figures and buildings–but they love to look at each others’ work, and they tease each other about the paint splotches left on their skin after a day in the studio.  She has a whole sketchbook full of pencil sketches of the future–waste of good paints, she says dryly–and it travels everywhere with her, always ready to be yanked out when she feels a flash of insight coming on.  She saves the lot of them from being arrested almost monthly, and there was one time where she saw a train wreck and called the company in a panic, and they found a loose bolt that would have come free and killed everyone on board.  It doesn’t always go that well, though–Joly lets her curl up in his lap when she can’t stop a vision, and she’ll put her head on his shoulder and cling to his shirt, Bousset’s hands gentle and soothing down her back, until she feels better.

• Feuilly is easily spotted as a mutant, because his skin is streaked in places with smooth, beautiful black scales.  They arch over one of his cheekbones, down the line of his spine and up the inside of one of his wrists.  It’s snakeskin, black mamba specifically, and he has a host of other tricks up his sleeve–he’s never felt the need to find out if he’s venomous, though.  Black mamba venom is one of the most lethal in the entire world, and he’s just as happy to never know.  But he can sense heat, taste/smell/something in between infinitesimally small particles and his skin is so sensitive that he can feel the print on a page or sense the change in vibration when an engine is low on oil.  He works as a mechanic, because he can turn on a car and put his hands on the hood and feel and smell and sense, and know what’s wrong in no time flat.  His coworkers are generally proud of his brilliance (he’s also working toward graduating summa cum laude with a Master’s in Engineering) but every so often they get a customer who’s an A-grade dick.

• Bahorel is a muscle-mimic–he can watch someone do something physical and replicate it perfectly.  He uses it for what he calls ‘cheap tricks’ more often than not, like the time he watched Feuilly fold a paper crane and settled down to folding a thousand of them.  (He gave them to Feuilly when the man came in with a bruise on his face, his scales raw as if someone had scraped them along the ground, and won a smile before Joly pounced on Feuilly to heal him.)  But it makes him unspeakably useful in a tight spot, because Bahorel’s spent so much time watching how the police fight in a riot that he can use it against them like it’s second nature.  He’d almost rather die than watch any of the others get banged up, and Joly spends almost as much time healing him as he does Bousset, just because Bahorel has no apparent self-preservation instincts to speak of.

• Jehan can talk to plants.  He’s like Layla from Sky High and I have no shame about that comparison.  He wears cuttings of flowers in his hair and they’ll grow through his braid and bloom happily and just kind of live off his energy until he puts them in dirt, and when he’s feeling particularly effusively affectionate tendrils of his plants will reach down his arms toward whoever’s closest to him.  Also, he’s normally very gentle and his plants are all pretty flowering vines and dandelions and things, but when shit gets serious during a protest or on the street, everyone is reminded very quickly that tree roots can crack open mountains.

• Grantaire can animate shadows.  He’s one of the unlucky ones–anyone can take a look at him and know he’s a mutant, his eyes glassy black and his curls shifting as if in a low wind as the shadows shift on his skin.  He’s been told all his life that it’s ugly, that the way the shadows curl lively along his jaw and under his curls and beneath his brows.  It’s useful sometimes, being able to summon a shadow army to get between the police and the fleeing Amis, or being able to animate a sparring partner out of his own shadow, but Grantaire is always the first one to call Enjolras out on being naive.  Easy to talk about how humans will trust you when you look like an angel–less so when you deal in darkness.  Enjolras is perpetually furious with Grantaire’s cynicism, but he’s more furious with the world that created him, that convinced him that his mutation is something ugly and irredeemable.  He thinks (but never says) that Grantaire’s shadows are beautiful, like ink spilled over his skin, and once they finally work their shit out (Gavroche is the one who makes it happen, probably, because he’s a sneaky little shit), he discovers that Grantaire can let his shadows spill on Enjolras’ skin, leaving dark pools against the golden radiance.

• Gavroche and Eponine (and Azelma, wherever she is) have a modification of the same mutation, which is, according to Thenardier, the only reason he knows they’re all his children.  They’re all pyrokinetics, although at different levels–Gavroche is a manipulator, able to shape heat and fire into any shape as long as he has something to work with, and Azelma is a firestarter, but Eponine is the only one of them who can do both, just like their father.  They’re all easy to spot as mutants, too, with eyes that flicker red with flames when they catch the lights and core body temperatures well north of 200 F.  She’s terrified that somehow her power’s going to corrupt her, turn her into Thenardier, and Marius is the first person who shows nothing but pure delight at the sparks that crackle out of her hair and the flames that lick her fingers.  She can’t help but love him a little for that.

• As long as we’re on the subject, Patron-Minette.  Montparnasse’s mutation is 100% out of his control, he can’t turn it off or strengthen it at all.  When asked, he tells everyone his mutation is being beautiful.  In reality, he doesn’t really understand it, but it’s something to do with pheromones–just about everyone who sees him, who draws close enough to talk, is clobbered with a metaphorical two by four of attraction.  It’s very useful in the killer-for-hire business, and he’d never admit how uncomfortable it makes him sometimes.  Eponine, her skin always just this side of burning, is one of the only people unaffected, and he’d kill to keep her around.  Claquesous is a teleporter, and Babet is a metamorph, able to look like anyone he wants, and Gueulemer has superstrength.

• Marius isn’t a mutant.  He did get booted out of his grandfather’s home and disinherited for starting a fight in polite society about mutant rights, though, so Bahorel and Courfeyrac take to him immediately.  But he also had the misfortune to walk into a conversation about the concept of a mutant ‘cure’ and open with “Well, some mutants might need it” and that went over a treat.  He managed to redeem himself, though, although Enjolras eyed him with suspicion for a while.

• Cosette!  My sweet girl!  Has wings!  They’re not the crisp white wings of an angel or a dove, either–they’re broad and angled and bronze fletched with dark red, the wings of a hawk.  She normally hides them by binding them down under her clothes–her mother had wings too, she remembers vaguely, wide and soft and wheat-pale as a songbird’s, and it was Mama who taught her to bind them down, hide them, before she went away.  Marius saw her for the first time with shed feathers braided into her hair until she looked like a spirit from another world, and she’s strong enough to take him flying (bridal style, of course).

• Valjean’s not a mutant, but Javert is.  He’s also neck-deep in denial.

Anonymous asked: Your PoC post just reignited my desire for Les Mis pirate fic; also Elizabeth Swann is my favorite character in the entire series

Okay, first of all, liking Elizabeth Baddest-Ass-Sailing-The-Seven-Seas Swann best is an indication of exceptional taste, I approve, you go.  Second of all, it’s way too one-in-the-morning for me to write actual fic, but I’m gonna cast the fuck out of a pirate AU, because motherfucking pirates.

• Enjolras: the captain, of course, of the buccaneer ship Abaisse.  It’s small, easily crewed by half a dozen in a real pinch, and as long as no one takes any injuries their little crew does pretty well.  Abaisse–or ABC, as they affectionately call her–is a whip-quick little boat, too, their attack method to strike like lightning and raid even the biggest merchant ship in minutes.  Enjolras was the son of a wealthy merchant–he bought Abaisse with the last of his own money, after he left in a rage upon discovering that his father’s lucrative new business venture was based on human cargo.  Abaisse’s first strike was on one of his father’s merchant ships, crossing the ocean to bring slaves to the New World–her crew took the ship like a hurricane and earned themselves the nickname Les Amis, after they turned the ship over to the captured men and women.
  

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sroloc--elbisivni asked: *whispers* your original fic slays me it is lovely and gorgeous and the characters are so alive and vivid and downright delightful would it be presumptuous to ask for some of your favorite headcanons re: Polaris characters?

H O N E Y, I love you so much right now, fucking YES you can ask me about my original writing.  Original writing is everything to me, and my ridiculous gay revolutionaries are just…I love them a lot.  Also the best part is that I’m the author, fuck the man, my headcanons are fucking CANON.  OKAY.  This got HELLA LONG, I’m so sorry, I ramble about this shit.  Let this be a lesson about asking writers about their original characters: it leads to LENGTHY responses.

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Anonymous asked: Headcanons for your Claire Temple Ao3 fic? Maybe five random run ins Claire has with superheroes while not on the clock saving their lives. Also, since I know you are a bastard, preferably /funny/ or happy run ins. Try to rein in the pain, agony inc.

Oh God, that’s right, that fic exists.  For those of you who are new to the party, it’s this, and I haven’t updated it in literal months, for which I am formally sorry.  In unrelated news, yes I am a bastard, and Agony Inc. is my new favorite thing, I will be tagging all upsetting writing as such.

• There’s actually tentative plans for this to be a sister-fic, but since it’ll obviously take me a millennium to write that, here: Superhero Adjunct Drinking Night, facilitated by Natasha Romanoff (who won’t hear argument that she’s a superhero, and therefore part of the problem) and enabled by Pepper Potts’ gold card.  It starts after Natasha comes and gets Claire to help her fish Clint out of a dumpster, and when Natasha turns up not a week later Claire’s first response is to grab her first aid kit.  Instead, Natasha waves her down, hands her a jacket, and steers her out of the apartment and drives to a bar—it feels more like a kidnapping than getting drinks with friends, but Natasha generously pays for drinks all night, and Claire could stand a few more kidnappings like this.  This proceeds to happen about once a week for two months, at which point Claire gets a call from an unknown number on her personal cell, and a polite voice asks, “Would you mind if I accompanied Natasha to your girls’ night tonight?” Pepper proves to be a riotously funny drunk, with enough stories about her time as Tony’s PA to keep them laughing too.  The next time Claire treats Jessica for acute failure to demonstrate the common sense God gave a squirrel (technical terms) and sees Malcolm silently working up a stress ulcer, she invites him out with them—he gets juice rather than liquor, but he’s witty and wry and only a little starstruck, all in all a good addition.  Karen is the next addition, after she spends a full hour shouting at Matt while Claire stitches him up, and it’s lucky that she doesn’t bring Foggy that first week, because there’s a deeply awkward moment where she and Natasha eye each other like feral wolves and greet each other by strange names.  “Vasilisa,” Natasha says, “I thought you were dead.” Karen bares her teeth politely and replies, “Natalia, I thought you were a better spy.”  Pepper looks up at the ceiling like she’s praying for strength and orders an entire bottle of vodka, setting it between the two other redheads like an olive branch.  All is calm, after that, although the two are eerily alike, dark gallows humor flecking their speech.  Foggy comes, the next week, then a woman named Candace who drops into a chair like she belongs there and introduces herself as ‘an ex of an X-Man’ and snickers at their faces, then a dark-haired twenty-something in glasses who complains about Asgardians, then a cranky blind woman who refuses to talk about her roommate…. It snowballs pretty bad, is the point, and it gets to the point where Pepper is comfortably dropping a grand on drinks.  Claire likes it, though, it’s the most normal thing she’s handled lately.
• Also: she’s not sure how anyone finds out about Superhero Adjunct Drinking Night, but apparently it’s sovereign, because through mysterious happenings there’s never once an attack or other disaster on the night in question, even though they’re a perfect target for any enterprising villain in the mood for hostages. “Mysteries of the life,” Claire says dryly.  “Another round of tequila, I think.”

• Claire definitely sees Steve Rogers in her preferred grocery store.  Actually, she sees him in her preferred grocery store a lot, so much that she corners him and interrogates him about who made him follow her.  He looks pretty alarmed—for a six-foot-plus brick house, he does ‘alarmed’ remarkably well—and sheepishly admits that if he gets groceries anywhere closer to the city center and the Tower, he gets accosted.  Hell’s Kitchen is a little out of his way, but apparently it’s worth it for a few minutes of peace.  Claire huffs, grabs the cheap box of cereal he’d tossed into his basket, and informs him that if he’s shopping on seventy years of back pay he can afford to get the name brand stuff that doesn’t taste like paper.  They see each other about every other week, and Claire works really hard not to laugh at his offended tirade about bananas.

• Claire’s pretty much over the shock of having someone knock on her bedroom window, which is inaccessible by human means and on the fourth floor besides, but she’s used to having it happen at night, not three in the afternoon.  But she opens it, lets the person—people—through and starts working up to a lecture about how she gives them a phone number for a reason before she realizes that it’s just Peter, sitting on her floor, apparently uninjured and dressed in civvies and dripping dismally onto the carpet from the downpour.  “You could’ve been seen,” she says automatically, and he slants a look up at her through the floppy locks of wet hair falling into his face—it’s pouring, and has been for hours, so it’s unlikely anyone was exactly paying enough attention to see a kid crawl down a building.  “Mind if I hang out here for a couple hours?” he asks, and when she doesn’t answer immediately he flicks his hair out of his face, looking uncomfortable, and adds, “Um, it’s the anniversary of my uncle’s death and my aunt’s not home and I…didn’t really want to stay there alone.”  Claire sighs and throws a towel at his face, and walks out into her kitchen, calling back to grab some dry clothes out of her closet before he gets her couch wet.  She’s no great shakes in the kitchen, but she can make tea, so she does, the chamomile blend Abuela gives her in vast quantities as a remedy for stress.  Peter sits on her couch in sweats that are about four sizes too big—most of her spare clothes are for people who aren’t nineteen—and drinks the tea in silence and watches a Harry Potter marathon on TV while Claire lays out her first aid kit and sorts through it on the floor.  When she joins him on the couch, he leans his head onto her shoulder and falls asleep, face twisted into a frown and his hair drying into cowlicks.  She sighs, the deep, from-the-soles-of-her-feet, why-does-this-happen-to-me sigh she perfected after the second time Matt called her, and shifts them so that Peter’s head is in her lap and her hand is in his hair. It eases the frown, so maybe it’s okay that this specific thing is happening to her.

• This is how Claire Temple meets Frank Castle, AKA the Punisher, AKA a dead guy: she gets a date.  She goes on the date.  She brings the date back to her place.  She finds a tall and menacing guy standing outside the door of her apartment building, dressed in a long coat and a shoulder holster and a black eye under his military buzz cut.  He stops her date with a look like steel and offers Claire a file without a word, and she takes it, because that’s what her life is turning into these days.  The file is either a threat (unlikely, because Buzz Cut Man is armed and hasn’t directly threatened her yet) or something that someone thinks will help her (more likely, because Buzz Cut Man is glaring at her date like he’s pissed him off personally rather than standing there and looking pale and scared), so she opens it because either way, it is what it is. It turns out that the file is a terrifyingly complete background check on her date, all the way back to grade school and annotated by three people, and includes his marriage certificate, with a post-it note in Karen’s tidy handwriting that says ‘no divorce in the works.’  Claire sighs—the guy seemed like a pretty bad lay anyway, too narcissistic—and closes the file.  “You,” she tells her date, “go home to your wife and ask for a fucking divorce if you’re going to sleep around anyway.  You,” she tells Buzz Cut Man, “can come inside and I’ll give you some ice to put on that eye.  And tell Karen and Natasha that I can vet my own dates.”  He mutters something, and stands to attention when she arches an eyebrow at him. “You can tell them,” he repeats, and she snorts.

• And a sneak peek of the next chapter, if I ever have time to write the damn thing: Claire has a lot of friends in the medical field, and even though she hasn’t spoken much to this particular friend since undergrad, the Organic Chemistry bond is real, so when her friend calls, Claire answers.  Her friend helps run a women’s health clinic that offers abortions and has been facing increasingly aggressive harassment, not to mention their financial problems, and she’s been calling around looking for anyone, anyone at all, who’s willing to help protect the women trying to get into the clinic.  Claire’s response is “Well, I’ll see what I can do, and I’ll come up on my next day off.” And then she calls Jessica, because Jessica knows everyone, and explains, and Jessica’s whole response is “Leave it to me.”  So when Claire goes up to help out on her next day off, she’s more than a little surprised to find Captain America, Luke Cage, and Colossus all standing in front of the doors and looking solemn.  Not nearly as surprised as her old friend, though, who’s talking to Natasha and Kitty and a blonde woman—is that Trish Walker, Claire wonders, making a mental note to invite her to the Drinking Nights—and looks about a second from fainting.  
  
• “Claire, who the fuck are these people?” her friend hisses when the protesters start turning up and Steve, Forties charm in full swing, offers his arm to the first girl he sees, shooting a venomous look over her head at the closest sign-bearing man.
• “Uh,” Claire says blankly as she catches a familiar pair of figures on a nearby roof—one horned, one sleek and bright red and blue.  “My…friends?”

Anonymous asked: So about this Jedi AU I see that you have all the things about John and Ham but what about Burr? Ham and John have perfect moral compass that doesnt stray but what about Burr and maybe straying between Jedi and Sith and getting corrupted by TJeff idk

All right, my bespectacled buddy, how fortunate, because I have Thoughts about Jedi Aaron Burr.  Also, there is now a tag for this AU.

I suppose I should mention that I actually have no idea where the Sith fit in this universe.  For a story of sweeping good and evil, the Sith and the Jedi are the logical ends of the spectrum, but a revolution…isn’t that simple.  For every General Benedict Arnold ready to turn on his country for wounded pride, there’s a plain soldier ready to go too far in defense of what he believes is freedom, ready to tar and feather someone for the crime of an accent or a birth–the line blurs.  The opponent of a revolution is, in fact, lack of emotion.  Passion drives a revolution.  The Jedi…are not at ease with this.  Honestly, the Sith are probably sitting in some corner of the galaxy sulking over the fact that they are suddenly quite superfluous.  Between the Empire and the Continentals, there’s more than enough chaos to go around.

• First, Aaron Burr is actually the best Jedi–he’s not like Washington, putting up a good facade while he gets secret-married and bides his time for a revolution, nor like Lee, who basks in the glory and honor of being a Jedi Master.  Burr really believes it, there is no emotion, there is no ignorance, there is no passion, there is no chaos, there is no death.  He’s uncannily good at it, taking whatever the universe throws at him with the same serene smile.  He’s so good at it, in fact, that his Master, upon recommending him for Knighthood, added that they would do well to find him something to fight for.  That he could be great, if he had something to fight for.
  
• Even a Jedi needs ideals, is the thing.
• The first time Burr meets Alexander Hamilton, the feral Force user challenges him with if you stand for nothing, what’ll you fall for?
• He…doesn’t have an answer, he doesn’t even think he understands the question, and that…that’s new.
• Aaron Burr goes to Washington, with his glowing Jedi record and an offer of help, and it goes about how it did in reality/the musical.
• Washington: I am in dire need of assistance!
• Burr: Hey, I am 100% down to be a secretary.
• Washington: It’s not that dire, take it easy.  Hey, angry fighty barely-not-a-teenager Hamilton, you want a job?  No?  Sure you do.
• Aaron is left standing there, overwhelmed with emotion for the first time in his life, and the envy is almost baffling.  But it’s all right, it’s fine, he can take a couple of deep breaths and let it go, there is no emotion, there is no passion, and he smiles and smiles and nods and takes the command he’s offered as…the word consolation rises in his mind and he dismisses it with a vengeance.  Aaron Burr is a Jedi, like his Master and her Master before her, and his Master crafted a new lightsaber form, she was a genius, her Master did a lengthy stint on the Council, he commanded respect–no lineage of theirs is unstable enough to need consoling.  He has a legacy to protect.  The hot twist in his gut is only discomfort at how wrong-footed Hamilton makes him, the rushing in his ears only the Force spinning wild in the war.
• Aaron Burr fights in the war.  Makes quite a name for himself, actually, as crisp and efficient in every way.  It’s not a bad reputation to have, especially once he brings that reputation to bear and puts down a mutiny about a year before Monmouth.  Admittedly he’s not close with his men, but that’s fine.  He’s a Jedi, their commander, and that’s all he needs.  Even once he suffers a mild Force burnout and a much more serious heat stroke over Monmouth, he is still of use to the army, even if he can’t fight anymore, and that’s fine, that’s enough, he’s all right with that, because there is peace, serenity, harmony, Force.
• He crosses paths with Hamilton often, the man apparently permanently installed in Washington’s orbit, opposite Lafayette and beside Washington’s own padawan.  Burr refuses to admit to that flare of bitter heat through his chest every time Hamilton comes bounding up to him, grinning, and greets him like an old friend, spilling joy-irritation-grief-anger-laughter through the Force.  Hamilton is a never-ending torrent of emotion, always preferring to fight a battle rather than let it stand, and just being around him feels like it’s contagious.
• It doesn’t help that Aaron still feels (or rather, refuses to feel) that twist of envy every time he watches Hamilton spin words out of thin air, feels him move through the Force like he’s a part of it–abrasive and emotional as he is, Hamilton is better than Aaron, and he doesn’t understand why.  Peace over emotion, serenity over passion, and yet…and yet Hamilton is wild as anything and still better.
• It’s made worse by the fact that Hamilton doesn’t seem to notice.  He considers Burr a friend, and he thinks Burr is brilliant–that’s just how he works.  Hamilton doesn’t grant friendship to fools, and therefore all his friends must be as wickedly knife-edge sharp as he is, Laurens and Burr and Lafayette and Washington and, and, and….
• Hamilton is a hurricane, and all that can be done is to let him sweep you up and trust that you’ll understand eventually.
• He is not, cannot be, will not be jealous.  He is a Jedi and he will let go his emotions and if letting go feels more like swallowing down, these days, then surely it is only the stress.  He just needs to meditate.  It will go away.
• And now here is a question.  Suppose a man spends all his time, for years on end, forcing himself into the trap of the Jedi code and withstanding Hamilton Feeling in his direction constantly, whether it’s the man’s oddly pure and childlike delight with having friends or his eternal aggravation with Burr’s indeterminate politics and philosophy and everything else.  Now suppose that man finally, finally, loses his temper.
• How do you suppose that such a thing will erupt?

Anonymous asked: So, about this Hamilton Star Wars AU: I have noticed an unacceptable lack of Hamilton/Laurens headcanons and feelings and urge you to inflict these on us at your earliest convenience.

Oh, sorry, friend, it looks like you’ve got a typo, I think you meant hey, Moran, inflict your thoughts on Space Monmouth on us, seeing as Laurens almost died there. 

• Washington, by this point, has been SOUNDLY outed as a Bad Code-Breaking Jedi (with a wife, the Council would like to reiterate).  So the Congress governing the Continental systems decided that they needed to save face a little and made Washington promote Master Lee to the rank of Major General, because his record as a Jedi is impeccable.
  
• Um, naturally, way back when they first meet, Lee takes one look at Washington’s padawan and launches into a truly epic lecture about the dangers and crimes of attachment.  Laurens poker-faces through the whole thing and Hamilton instantly and deeply loathes Lee, because Laurens starts to retreat again.  It’s taken him months to coax Laurens into kissing him, into letting him slip into his bunk and nestle into him sleepily.  Laurens has even started being the one to initiate, tugging Hamilton down by the hand and wrapping long arms around him, pressing skin to skin.  That changes with Lee standing around, looking judgemental.
• That’s okay, though, because Laurens deeply and sincerely loathes Lee for the dispassionate report that Hamilton died at Schuylkill.  Everyone hates Lee, basically.
• Lee actually turns down the command at first because he’s offended at how small it is, never mind that the Continental army is desperately strapped for men and fighters alike.  Washington has the best deadpan in the business, which is the only reason that Lee doesn’t know how relieved he is to hand the command over to Lafayette.
• Of course, then Lee comes back and says he’s going to take command after all, and attack the Empire troops as they leave the desert moon Monmouth, where they spent their own winter.  Washington still holds up that deadpan, because the only other option is to rest his head on the table and swear like a smuggler.
• So they go to battle, Laurens and Hamilton among the fighters Lee leads down into the atmosphere.  The heat from low-atmo combat is so awful a few ships–Continental and Imperial alike–malfunction on the spot and go down in flaming wreckage, all hands dead.
• Here’s the thing.  There’s a trend across Laurens and Hamilton’s experience in battle.  
• At Brandywine, Laurens almost died, after taking a blaster shot to the shoulder.
• Schuylkill was Schuylkill.
• On the Island, Hamilton broke onto an Imperial ship and stole twenty-one out of twenty-four top-of-the-line fighters, while ignoring heavy strafing fire from a battlecruiser.  Hercules, who was there, swears up and down that it gave him grey hair.
• Innumerable other skirmishes have proved that, given the opening, they’re more likely to risk their necks than preserve them.
• They should be used to it, is the thing.  And Laurens might be, if he does say so himself, because Hamilton can find a near-lethal fight with any civilian on the street.  Hamilton, on the other hand, is not, and when Laurens is shot out of the sky, he doesn’t even try to find the other man’s Force signature before he panics.
• Lee is a coward at heart.  He’s not prepared to face the brutal heat, nor the desperation of the Imperial troops, nor the explosion of a Force-hurricane at the combat line.  He runs, and when he runs, the ragged Continental line shatters.
• And then the General’s personal fighter, the Vernon, comes screaming in from the edge of the atmosphere with Lafayette’s Marquis on his wing and the hurricane of Hamilton’s power still roaring so that even the soldiers with less Force-sense than a potato can feel it, and the Continentalists rally with a vengeance.  It’s not a win, but they’ve proved they can hold their line.
• Laurens is pulled out of his wreckage, almost completely uninjured and drenched in Hamilton’s Force signature.  Laurens doesn’t know what happened, and Hamilton isn’t talking.  
• Lee starts talking shit, because Lee is terrible.
• Washington takes a minute, thinks about it, and immediately issues an order that Hamilton have nothing to do with Lee, because Hamilton is on the warpath about Laurens’ latest brush with death.
• Unfortunately, he fails to get ahead of Laurens himself, who is finally reaching his breaking point.  And who would probably jump off a space deck without a suit if Hamilton wanted him to.
• LIGHTSABER DUELS.  HAMILTON DOES NOT LIKE THEM.
• No, seriously, Jedi, Hamilton wants to know why you don’t use blasters like sane people.  He really does.  Using blasters and the Force together is both convenient and fun.  And ranged.  Get on his level.  
• Hamilton almost has a heart attack when he hears someone scream on the dueling ground, and the organ only resumes normal function when Laurens flicks off his lightsaber and lets Lee drop to the ground, a long cauterized wound to the ex-general’s ribs still smoking.
• Laurens is in trouble (Washington would like to be on record that he’s been encouraging attachment, not rampant violence, and he’s very disappointed), but Hamilton…oh, Hamilton is really in trouble.  Because Laurens can call it acting impulsively and ‘a learning experience,’ but Hamilton disobeyed a direct order.
• Washington doesn’t say “I’d send you home but this ship is the only one you have,” but it’s a near thing, and Hamilton looks crushed nonetheless.  It’s a bad day for everyone.
• Instead of being sent ‘home,’ Hamilton is sent away from the front lines (away from John, a greedy part of his mind mutters, and holocalls are so interceptible, they won’t even be able to see each other, letters only), to serve as a liaison and bodyguard for their best supply ship.
• The Revelation picks up its new passenger on its next pass.  At least he’s old friends with the sisters, Hamilton thinks glumly as he lets Eliza crush him in a hug and ruffles his hand through Peggy’s hair to make her squawk in offence and call for Angelica.
• Still.
• The girls aren’t Laurens.

ghostdog401 asked: If you're still looking for fic prompts what about e/R and a secretly royalty AU? Or just anything with a fairytale type feel?

Okay I see what you’re saying there but WHAT IF WE DID BOTH???  This got so long, I’m sorry, I got overexcited about fairy tales and I wrote 5K in like a day.  (No for real this is almost 5000 words, Jesus, self, what are you doing.)

Enjolras is a wished-for child, and he’s told as much every day by his mother, who bought his life with a few drops of blood on white silk in a gold embroidery hoop.  From the minute he learns to talk, he’s as fair as the sun and as sharp as her needle, and his country adores their young prince with their whole heart.  His mother Queen Lamarque is a good ruler and her Prince Consort is nice enough so all is well, and Enjolras grows up believing passionately in the rights of the people.  His tutors despair of him as a monarch but are delighted with him as a politician—it’s very strange for everyone.

And then the Queen dies, and everything goes to pieces, because the dowager Prince Regent isn’t a ruler by nature and Enjolras is still too damned young to take her place and it’s all quite a mess.  Vital government services are falling through, taxes are going uncollected or over-collected, the generals of the army are making warning noises about neighboring countries taking advantage of their weakened state, and everything is teetering on the edge of chaos.

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