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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Clint’s perspective of meeting Natasha in that one soulmate AU, for @littlestartopaz.

Clint’s soulmark curves under the line of his collarbone, in tiny, precise handwriting.  And it’s…interesting.  It’s in Russian, he learns that real quick as a kid, and when he’s seven, still living at home with his parents and his brother, he finds out that one of his teachers speaks the language.  He rushes up to her the very next day and explains, hasty and stammered, and she smiles kindly, offering to translate it for him.

He pulls down the collar of his shirt—he sees her eyes drag on the hand-shaped bruise on his wrist, but she doesn’t say anything—and she leans down to read his words.

“Let’s see,” she says, and reads out the Russian words.  Clint tries to memorize the sound of it, so that he’ll know his soulmate when they meet him.  “Oh,” the teacher says quietly, and smooths his shirt back over his mark.  “Listen, baby, I don’t think it’s anything you need to worry about just yet, okay?”

“What does it say?”

She gives him a smile, sort of grim and sad and confused, and says, “I’m sorry, baby, I’m not going to tell you. You don’t need that on your conscience today.”

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Some Nat/Steve friend fluff for @littlestartopaz, in that soulmate AU from earlier, reading it probably isn’t necessary but I’m always in search of approbation.  This is probably just a few months after the Avengers were formed, in my bastardized movies-comics-wishful-thinking-verse where they all live in Avengers Tower.

Steve and Natasha are sparring, because Steve gets nervous about sparring with fragile normal humans and Natasha is willing to bully him into it.  Tony isn’t generally one to spar, given the suit, and Clint’s still recovering from the cracked rib he sustained on their last mission, and Thor, who could take Steve’s full strength punch without batting an eye, is still off-planet handling his psychopath brother.  (No one asks Bruce to spar, because they all like being un-splatted.) So Natasha drags Steve’s protesting ass into the ring and punches him in the face until he fights back.  Unless he manages to actually grab her, it’s a pretty fair match.

It’s a system, okay, and if Natasha thinks it’s funny that he’s afraid he’ll hurt her, that’s between her and the inside of her own skull.

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So @littlestartopaz​ sent me this post and a request for Vision/Wanda and I fucking love this ship and also Jewish!Wanda is my jam (LITERALLY WHO AM I KIDDING, RELIGIOUS SUPERHEROES ARE MY JAM) so I did it.

Okay also Topaz I know you sent me this prompt a while ago but I wanted to be able to post it for the first night of Hanukkah so I held onto it for a few days.  And it’s now officially after sundown where I am, so Happy Hanukkah, everyone!

Wanda had set up a small table in the empty hall outside of Pietro’s room, where she could see him through the wall of windows without being kicked out for bringing fire into the medical wing. He was still asleep, even months after Sokovia—she’d seen him in this sort of healing coma before, but never for so long.  The external damage was healed, but his body was still rebuilding fragile nerves and blood vessels and ruined organ tissue.  The doctors said that he’d shut down every system to preserve what he could after taking those bullets to save Hawkeye, and she was glad for that, glad that, when he woke up, he would be her brother again.  She could stand any wait.

Or at least that’s what she told herself when she came down to sit with him.  

Wanda smoothed a blue cloth, fringed and embroidered with a white star, over the table she’d stolen from the lab. The steady beeping of the heart monitor inside the room was reassuring, but she missed hearing Pietro rattle around near her as she went through these motions.  The first year they had fine things, a soft cloth and matching candles and all, and he was comatose.

“Wanda?” a tentative voice behind her asked, and she jumped so hard the table rattled.  “I’m sorry,” Vision said as she whirled on her heel.  He was dressed in civilian clothes, plain and disingenuous against his bright synthskin, and he looked apologetic, as he always did when he took her by surprise.  He moved as quietly as a ghost most of the time and the Mind Gem let him shield his mind so tightly it was as if he wasn’t there at all, and Wanda was unused to being startled.  “I was looking for you, and this was the last place I could think of.  Don’t you usually visit your brother during the morning?”

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LIST THE FIRST PARAGRAPH OF YOUR LAST TEN FICS (AND SEE IF THERE ARE ANY PATTERNS)

I’m limiting myself to just fic-fics, not bullet-point-fics, because, like, I put out too much stuff.  Thanks to @buckygreyjoy for tagging me.

1) “This guy needs to chill out,” Chat Noir said, shooting a smirk at Ladybug to see her nose crinkle up.  Her look of fond distaste was the highlight of his day, every day, the kind of friendly teasing Adrien had always wished for as a little boy. The only thing better was when she actually shot a joke back at him, leaving a warm weight in his chest and a smile on his face.  –from this untitled canon Miraculous Ladybug fic 

2) 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.  –from this untitled Snow White AU Les Mis fic

3)  The message from Lee was greeted by a long beat of silence.  –from to see our glory, a canon-era Hamilton fic about Schuylkill, continued here

4) Eponine is ten, with parents who hate her and a little brother she’s terrified for, when she gets hit in the chest with a pebble.  Some other kid tossed it and it’s pouring rain and they probably didn’t even see her, but she goes down like she’s been shot.  –from a flower at my feet, a reincarnation AU Les Mis fic

5)  “Excuse me, sir, are you awake?”  The voice was feminine, warm and husky and stern, with a distinctive curl to the words, slack on the r and sharp over the vowels. New York City, then.  Home.  –from this as-yet-unpublished Winter Soldier AU Hamilton fic

6)  The landslide didn’t take him by surprise.  It was hard to take an earthbender by surprise, and harder when that earthbender had spent ten years mostly fending for himself.  So Grantaire was well out of the path of the falling rocks before they started to slip, and fully intended to let nature take its course.  The rocks were large, but they could be cleared easily, and he was trying to make this village last more than a season, which meant not doing things like diverting massive rockslides.  –from things we lost in the fire, an Avatar AU Les Mis fic

7) She isn’t a Skywalker—or maybe she is.  She can’t remember, so does it matter?  She is herself.  –from Shattered Glass and Sandstorms, a First Oder Rey Star Wars AU

8) John hadn’t slept heavily since coming to Valley Forge—the ill ease of a Southern boy exposed to the bitter nip of a Pennsylvania winter for the first time—but he was getting better at it.  The tiny hut was better than the tent, and their status as aides de camp of the general himself meant that they were only two to a hut.  It meant there was barely space to walk between the slapdash cots and the writing desk they shared and the two chairs. Alexander—who had insisted on the familiar address within scant days of meeting John, all sharp-edged smile and warm dark eyes—had a slightly easier time of it, as he wasn’t forced to stand with his head bowed whenever he drew too near a wall, but not much.  –from this untitled canon-era Hamilton fic

9) “This is without a doubt the stupidest plan you’ve ever had–”  –from this untitled Steve/Sam/Bucky friendship MCU fic

10) “Oh m’God, who’s cooking, that is amazing,” Rogue called as she swept into the mansion and was hit by a wall of smoky-sweet warmth spilling from the kitchen.  “Is that jambalaya?  Am I gonna have to do extra Danger Room sessions or somethin’ for that?” –from this untitled Rogue/Remy X-Men fic

Honestly? The first thought that comes to mind is “I write too much Les Mis fic for someone who’s never read the book all the way through” but fuck it, I do what I want.  Otherwise, I notice that I like to start with either a declarative statement (see 2, 3, 4, 6, 7) or someone doing something, preferably talking (see 1, 5, 9, 10), and heavy description as a cold open (8) is pretty uncommon.  Um, yeah, that’s what I got.  

In case anyone’s curious, I’m really proud of the First Order Rey one and I love the X-Men so y’all should feel free to hit me up for that.  Also, guess who has two thumbs and is a huge AmRev nerd?  *points at self*  So yeah, for all your gay canon-era Hamilton needs.

I don’t even fucking know who to tag, just.  Whoever.  It’s kind of cathartic going through old writing, you should do it if you’ve had a long day.

For @littlestartopaz from my vast repository of prompts from her.  R from this post, Steve/Bucky/Sam friendship (“This is without a doubt the stupidest plan you’ve ever had.  Of course I’m in.”)

Okay, some stealth feelings about Steve being all alone in the 21^st century snuck in there, but they’re real small and mostly this is very funny, I have no regrets.  Timelines for the first two should be obvious, the third one is some time after they drag Bucky’s poor exhausted self out of cryo again and go fight more shit. Because Steve is a fighty shit and Bucky would never be able to let him run off alone and Sam is rapidly falling into the same black hole of stress.  

“This is without a doubt the stupidest plan you’ve ever had–”

“Well, now, Buck, we both know that’s just not true,” Steve protested, half-laughing.

“The stupidest plan you’ve ever had,” Bucky repeated firmly, and knocked back the rest of his beer without breaking his scowl.  “Except for that time you became a lab rat,” he allowed as he lowered his glass, “this is the stupidest.”

“So are you gonna bail on me?”

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