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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Keep reading

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Keep reading

skymurdock asked: for the three-sentence AU meme, not that I personally consider this an AU: Steve Rogers being IN SPACE and not knowing wtf is going on down on earth, go.

words-writ-in-starlight:

All right, did you mean ‘Star Trek mashup,’ because I refuse to dignify Dick Spencer with even the slightest iota of my attention and I LOVE STAR TREK.  Um, there’s definitely gonna be more than three sentences, I tried but I got overexcited, sorry.  THERE’S A READMORE, THAT’S HOW OUT OF HAND THIS GOT.

• Starbase 616 is approximately five days at max warp past the generally accepted middle-of-nowhere, the kind of place they send you when you’ve slept with a higher-up’s spouse (or spouses, Security Officer Kellan will say mournfully, not that he knew it at the time) or after you’ve blown up a very expensive piece of equipment (Chief of Engineering Maxime Rochert is only allowed near the engines with supervision, is the running joke).  So when the ship drifts in, Starbase 616 has a hot second of panic, because they have never gotten a ship since the last troop of poor suckers was released from this purgatory.  It’s even worse because the USS Avenge left its last leg about a parsec back and seems to have crawled in on some kind of souped-up impulse engine none of them have seen before.  It’s even worse because, once they get on board to check why they’re not receiving a response to their thirty-one hails, they find:
  
• an AI that apparently fried itself and shut down all non-life support or non-propulsion systems,
• a piloting and navigation console that looks like it’s been ripped apart and hotwired together,
• and almost a dozen (sort of living) legends in deep cryostasis in the medical bay, with no other signs of life.
  

Keep reading

DAY TWO REBLOG.

skymurdock asked: for the three-sentence AU meme, not that I personally consider this an AU: Steve Rogers being IN SPACE and not knowing wtf is going on down on earth, go.

All right, did you mean ‘Star Trek mashup,’ because I refuse to dignify Dick Spencer with even the slightest iota of my attention and I LOVE STAR TREK.  Um, there’s definitely gonna be more than three sentences, I tried but I got overexcited, sorry.  THERE’S A READMORE, THAT’S HOW OUT OF HAND THIS GOT.

• Starbase 616 is approximately five days at max warp past the generally accepted middle-of-nowhere, the kind of place they send you when you’ve slept with a higher-up’s spouse (or spouses, Security Officer Kellan will say mournfully, not that he knew it at the time) or after you’ve blown up a very expensive piece of equipment (Chief of Engineering Maxime Rochert is only allowed near the engines with supervision, is the running joke).  So when the ship drifts in, Starbase 616 has a hot second of panic, because they have never gotten a ship since the last troop of poor suckers was released from this purgatory.  It’s even worse because the USS Avenge left its last leg about a parsec back and seems to have crawled in on some kind of souped-up impulse engine none of them have seen before.  It’s even worse because, once they get on board to check why they’re not receiving a response to their thirty-one hails, they find:
  
• an AI that apparently fried itself and shut down all non-life support or non-propulsion systems,
• a piloting and navigation console that looks like it’s been ripped apart and hotwired together,
• and almost a dozen (sort of living) legends in deep cryostasis in the medical bay, with no other signs of life.
  

Keep reading

In Which the Raft Will Fuck You (or Wanda) Up

For @littlestartopaz, Wanda/Vision, C (“Please, don’t leave”) and G (“I almost lost you”) from this, post CA:CW

Time for pain, children. Blame it on the fact that I found this gloriously accurate post full of thoughts about Wanda’s stint in the Raft.  In which Wanda has some trauma from being wrongfully imprisoned by a bunch of dickheads, and doesn’t talk much anymore.

“Wanda,” Steve said quietly, wrapping his hand around hers—he had tried to steer her by an elbow at first, the old habits of the forties coming up under stress, but she had stumbled back so quickly she’d barely missed falling off a curb.  “Come on, let’s go.”  He gave a tug and she drifted after him, silent.  He steered her toward the couch in their newest hideout and she let him push her down until she was sitting down, her hair pulled back into a tidy braid and her hands linked tightly together in her lap.  A blanket settled over her shoulders—Sam—and she slowly pulled her legs up to her chest, binding her arms tightly around her knees.

“We’re just going to be in the next room, kid,” Sam said, resting one hand on her shoulder, and waited, as if to give her a space to reply.  When she said nothing, he squeezed her shoulder and followed Steve out of the room. Wanda waited until they were gone and reached out with her fingers to catch the blanket and tug the corners over her hands.

Keep reading

rhiannananana asked: Youre looking for short writing prompts right? What about a character making a meal or something? I think I saw marvel in the tags so, uh, what about Steve cooking/figuring out how to work a microwave, since they were apparently made after ww2..?

All right all right all right, Steve with cooking implements, I am very here for this.  We’re going to assume that, somewhere between the movies, the Avengers DID actually cohabitate in the Tower, because I’m having trouble letting go of that part of comic canon.  This is probably right after the first movie, before Ultron and Winter Soldier.  Unfortunately that means no Sam, which I am sad about, fortunately that means I am not within my rights to wallow in the pain that is Bucky Barnes.  And awaaaaaay we go.

“All right, and that button does what again?” Steve asked, frowning.

Tony huffed a sigh and drummed his fingers against the counter, agitated.  “C’mon, Cap, we’ve done this like twelve times, how do you not have this yet?”

Keep reading

Request from @littlestartopaz: I has a Plunnie for thee. Little snit bits between Wanda and Vision at the compound about Vision learning to do things like when it’s okay to go into someone’s room. Or being the only one to knock on the wall like it’s a door. Or that one time he knocked on the floor under her bed because she was having nightmares and scared the shit out of her. 

Pre-Civil War, so no spoilers.

“Pardon me, Miss Maximoff, Captain Rogers asked me to–”

“Hey!” Wanda yelped in alarm, casting a hand out toward him.  Red light lashed out and left scorch marks on the wall, passing through him harmlessly.  He looked startled, eyes widening as he hung there halfway through the solid wall, and she dropped her arm, scowling.  “Do you mind?” she asked, tightening her grip on the towel wound around her chest.  Her hair dripped down her shoulder, a neat twist, and she could feel each drop of water leaving a cold track over her skin.  “It’s polite to knock if someone’s door is closed.”

Keep reading

Anonymous asked: Vision/Wanda "We are snowed in and the power's out, how do avoid hypothermia." Mini-fic PLEASE??? Also, mid-air kissing if it isn't too much trouble?

All right *cracks knuckles* gonna do kind of a combo to hit as many of those aspects as possible.  Post-Civil War, minor spoilers, I guess, and I’m assuming they’re not all actually holed up in Wakanda.

The apartment T’challa had acquired for them–in Brooklyn, because Steve left it up to Sam and Sam had pointed out the advantages of knowing the terrain–was middling in size, but it seemed echoingly huge at night.  Wanda hadn’t realized just how quickly she had grown used to the quiet noise of the others in the compound, someone always on hand to sit with no matter how late she was awake.  Insomnia and nightmares were rampant among the Avengers, and she was no exception, but now…now there was no one.  Steve was in his room, probably awake himself and trying to work their way out of this impossible problem.  Sam was better at sleeping than most of them, only really awake about one night in seven.  Lang was gone, Clint was out on a recon mission to check up on an old contact.  Barnes–Bucky–was still comatose in Wakanda, while they tried to find a cure for seventy years of brainwashing and torture.  She had offered her services, nervous, and T’challa had agreed to keep her in mind as a last resort–Wanda’s experience was all putting stuff in, but she could probably learn to take things out.  Until they found a solution, though, the man with the metal arm and the haunted blue eyes would stay in his glass coffin.

And Wanda was awake and alone and cold, at three in the morning on a Saturday, sitting on a couch and staring at a dark television.  

Keep reading