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

the power goes out in the fray

For @littlestartopaz: What would have happened if Leia was sent to Tatooine and Luke to Alderaan?

This sounds like an excuse for my very favorite thing: blatantly strong-in-the-Force Jedi Leia. I was gonna do headcanons but instead HERE is the first scene of Leia Skywalker of Tatooine finding some old asshole in a brown robe.  *backflips out*

Leia scowled at the old man—Ben Kenobi, her ass—and the droid at her knee warbled happily.

“You lied,” Leia said.  The sweet-faced boy draped in white robes on the recording had asked for an Obi-wan, but Kenobi’s aren’t exactly a dime a dozen since the old homestead was annihilated by the Tuskens.  She can do the math.

“From a certain point of view,” Kenobi said with a shrug, smiling down at the droid.

“The boy on the recording–”

[Prince Luke Organa of Alderaan] the droid offered.

“—very helpful, thanks, Prince Luke said you were his only hope,” Leia said, prowling forward.  “What exactly qualifies you for that, old man?”

Kenobi looked up at her with a start at that, blinking pale blue eyes at her, and gave a brittle half-laugh.  “You’re very much like your father, when I knew him,” he said distantly.  And then he launched into an epic tale about Jedi and her father and Leia stood, feeling shock shiver through her.  She had known that her father was a general, but a Jedi?

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@littlestartopaz asked for A, G, and P from this fandom ask meme!

A: Your current OTP (Topaz specified ATLA)

…I’m not very interesting and I actually really like Aang/Katara, but my favorite ship is Zuko/Mai and I’m perpetually really cranky that she’s apparently???  Not his Queen/Empress/Lady Wife/whatever you call it????  They’re a really devoted and incredibly salty pairing and that speaks to me.  And also I like watching Mai wreck people while Zuko stands back and smirks.

G: What was your first fandom?

X-Men.  Since I was seven.  I wanted to be a mutant and go to Xavier’s about 10000000x more than I wanted to go to Hogwarts.

P: Invent a random AU for any fandom

The AU in which the Animorphs manage to drive off the Yeerks and still keep their shit pretty much 100% under wraps because the BPRD from Hellboy catches on before the general populace and makes all the ex-Controllers sign more nondisclosure agreements than anyone ever because they’re kind of like “…we don’t…have an aliens department…but we’re usually responsible for this kind of shit?”  And they get kind of high-key glomped by the BPRD for the brand-spanking new BARD (Bureau of Alien Research and Defense), which is comprised of like five squeaky new agents, an ex-Marine captain who lasts about two and a half seconds before he quits, and an archivist who almost bawls her eyes out when she’s shown the stack of paperwork she has to do.  Plus four sixteen-year-old humans, an Andalite who opts to stick around and play galactic liason for his best friends, and a talking hawk.  

Some headcanons:

• The BARD has a truly astounding agent overturn rate, because people come in, and about 75% of them leave when they suddenly realize that they’re expected to take Jake’s lead.  It’s a problem.  It’s more of a problem because Marco, Tobias, and Rachel gleefully (and unsubtly) take bets.  Tobias, for the first time literally ever, has money, because he has an uncanny knack for picking out the ones who will make it.  He buys the others stuff because what the fuck else is he going to do with it.

• Hellboy thinks they’re the greatest.  He worries because they are Very Young, but also: Rachel morphed elephant and cleaned his clock, he thinks they’re the greatest.  And he gets being hurled into a war you don’t want to or aren’t ready to fight.  Hellboy comes to visit the BARD all the time, especially since it’s an Approved Outing according to the BPRD.  Also he and Tobias are weirdly good friends, which confuses a lot of people.  

• Abe Sapien speaks fluent thoughtspeech and Ax finds him fascinating, they’re good friends.  The first time he has a conversation with the others, Rachel punches him in the face for reading her mind.  Jake comes pretty close too.  Fortunately, Abe believes in the principle of ‘forgive and forget’ and is perfectly willing to not read their minds, so the lot of them get along okay after that.

• Rachel and Liz actually don’t match ideologies very well, they prickle off each other too much–being unable to control herself is Rachel’s greatest anxiety, and relishing the destruction is Liz’s greatest fear, and they scare each other.  Liz and Cassie match up worse, though, because Liz is still the sort of woman who will ruthlessly immolate an entire room in order to save Hellboy.  That’s not to say the Animorphs don’t like Liz, though, they like her just fine and she immediately installs herself as their de facto big sister.  Her self-assumed duties include:
• making sure Jake remembers to eat
• listening to Marco complain about how fucking stupid bureaucracy is and how much easier when it was, quote, “just wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am and blow up a McDonalds”
• providing Tobias with a slightly more useful sounding board regarding Rachel than, well, Marco
• teaching Cassie to meditate
• explaining colloquialisms to Ax (she’s gotten weirdly good at this from hanging around Hellboy and Abe so much)
• letting Rachel rage when Rachel needs it, because if there’s one thing she gets, it’s the occasional need to scream yourself hoarse just because everything is so unfair

cadeteyes asked: If you're taking rogue one prompts, could you do headcannons for the tragic space bbys (those being Cassian and Bodhi. I have a few of my own but I'd love to see what other people think)

I am…sorry…it’s possible I went Full Tragic with these.

Cassian

• Cassian Andor has a home planet—Fest—but only in the most generously technical sense. (When Jyn asks, he shrugs and says “It’s cold, somewhere out on the Rim.  My sister showed me how to throw snowballs there when I was four.”  That’s about what he knows.)  His parents are merchants—legitimate merchants, thank you very much—and he learns young how to act like he knows where he’s going and what he’s doing, because wandering young children are always kind of a popular target for trouble.
• Cassian doesn’t remember a single day when someone flipped a switch and he lived in the Empire, it was more of a slow slide until suddenly everything was Stormtroopers and the whispers of Darth Vader and the Imperial Flag high overhead. And one day he looked up and saw the flag, and looked down and saw his parents smuggling information out of merchant centers for those who needed it, and he decided he was going to do something.  That’s the day he remembers.
• Cassian has never been naïve.  Three weeks later, he learned that spies die, and that, sometimes, saving something is worth paying with your life.  His parents and his sister bought his escape with theirs.  Watching their blood cool as he hid, he decided he was still going to do something, even if he died trying.
• Cassian speaks…a lot of languages.  The running joke in the Rebel Alliance is that if you need a translator and none of the droids can manage, it’s time to call Cassian.  He just kind of picked them up as he drifted, after his parents died, and hell, he was six then and it’s been twenty years, he’s worth his weight in gold as a linguist.  Of course, he’s only fluent in about eight, but if you need to talk to some random guy from Fuck All Nowhere, Outer Rim, Cassian’s your man.  It doesn’t matter if he’s never heard the language before, he’s going to Make It Happen.  That’s the other thing Cassian’s known for: Making It Happen.  It’s a good trait in a spy.
• (Cassian never meets Luke Skywalker—he dies just hours too soon.  But Luke would have liked to listen to Cassian curse in a cluttered mix of Bocce and Huttese and Force knows what else.  It’s the sound of home.)
• Cassian was formally recruited into the Rebellion because he managed to pick a spy’s pocket successfully, and then the spy watched this skinny eleven-year-old lie his ass off to a Stormtrooper and steal a speeder.  The spy (Cassian doesn’t remember his name, the man died on his next mission and Cassian cried for him) basically tucked Cassian under his arm like a football and kidnapped him.  He was welcomed like a prodigal into the Rebel Alliance, his family remembered for their sacrifice and his information collected over his wanderings a desperately needed help.
• His method of official entry to the Rebellion had a serious impact on Cassian’s recruiting style.
• Cassian has met Leia—she’s almost seven years younger than him, and she acts like he should know how high to jump before she gives the order.  He thinks she’s Great™.  He once watched her slay a man with nothing but words at forty paces and it was the most amazing thing he’d ever seen.  He thinks Bail Organa is Also Great™ and is absolutely flattered beyond belief when he one time hears Bail refer to him as their best spy.
• And finally: Cassian has done some bad shit.  He’s killed, he’s lied, and he’s been on both sides of the interrogation table more than once—sometimes nicely, other times…less so.  But the Rebellion is his home, it’s the only home he’s ever had since the warmth of his sister’s hand and his mother’s smile and his father’s voice, and he’s willing to do what he has to in order to protect it.  He regrets very little, and he still holds his hope for victory close to his heart. And it burns him that Jyn Erso is so ready to act righteous when she’s hidden from the war all these years.  It burns worse because he watches her speak and watches her rage and Force she’s like a star given human flesh, and he can’t breathe with how much he wants to see her lit up with belief in something.
• He dies at peace, breathing easy, because he’s protected his home and he’s seen Jyn on fire with passion and righteous anger and it was all he’s ever dreamed.

Bodhi

• Bodhi Rook doesn’t remember this—there’s a lot he doesn’t remember, from Before—but he has met Baze and Chirrut before. Actually, he met Guardian Malbus and Guardian Îmwe, when he came up to their knees.  All he remembers is that he loved the Temple of the Whills, loved the smooth warmth of the carved stone walls and the way the altar glowed dimly in the dark and the feeling of breathing in energy when he stood near the crystals.  He doesn’t remember Guardian Malbus’ booming laugh as he gaped up at the arches of the ceiling, nor Guardian Îmwe’s wide grin when he breathlessly said that it was beautiful.  He doesn’t remember the way he touched a kyber crystal—so daring he could barely believe it of himself—and felt it sing under his fingers and saw Guardian Îmwe’s milky eyes turn toward him as if summoned by the thrum in the air.
• Bodhi also doesn’t remember that he swore up and down for a full two years that he was going to be a Guardian.  
• Bodhi does remember a specific day when the flag of the Empire rose overhead.  The clones they had come to trust as the strong arm of the Jedi swept through Jedha City like a storm, and Bodhi remembers with horrible clarity the stark white of their uniforms, scrubbed clean of the individualized markers they’d been so proud of.  He remembers most clearly of all the body of one of the Guardians who had been most indulgent of him, a tall, powerful Togruta woman with a lightning-like scar branching down the length of her arm, splayed broken on the ground with her glazed eyes pointed to the flag hung out from the Temple wall.
• Bodhi remembers the lesson he learned that day: even the best fighter can’t stand against the Empire.
• Bodhi has two mothers and twin baby brothers and they need to be fed.  The Empire pays.  He’s sixteen when he swallows down his nausea and takes the cargo job.  He’s a good pilot—they don’t care about his age.
• It doesn’t hurt as much to watch them rip out the kyber crystals if he doesn’t watch.  
• Bodhi has seen more combat than you might think.  He’s been hit by raiders three times, Rebels twice, and perfected the fine art of ‘running like hell,’ but it doesn’t always work out.  He’s only ever had to shoot someone twice.
• He doesn’t want to talk about it.
• Bodhi is a little in love with Galen Erso.  Not so much with the man himself, although certainly there’s an appeal to the nimble fingers and soft voice and steady gaze, but with his courage. Bodhi, who misses the steady pulse of the kyber crystals, listens to Galen speak quietly about resistance and courage and finding a way to do the right thing, and sees the bright flicker of brave-hearted determination beneath the veneer of the Imperial engineer.  He listens, and Galen’s voice washes over him, and Bodhi loves him for the steady gaze in his eyes.  
• The same brave-bright storm lights in Jyn, as she fights to convince the Alliance of her father’s message, and she looks at him with a steady fire in her eyes, and Bodhi loves her for it.

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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Anonymous asked: Can we talk about K-2SO OMG he is such a precious child and he is so rude and I love him

MY DEAR ASSHOLE ROBOT.

So here’s something K-2SO has never told Cassian: he remembers part of his time as an Imperial droid.  Not much–certainly not enough to know what to tell a Stormtrooper where he’s taking some prisoners, thank you, Cassian.  Just a few minutes, prior to the reboot.

He remembers [IDENTIFY: SPY, REBEL ALLIANCE] ticking over his visual scanner.  He remembers [COMMAND: ELIMINATE], and advancing on the organic in the overlarge coat.  He remembers the organic–[IDENTIFY: MALE, HUMANOID, YOUNG]–pressing his lips together and taking aim with a blaster.

He remembers cold.

Which is stupid, of course, droids don’t feel cold, K-2 is designed to survive the vacuum of space.

But still.

The next thing he remembers is powering on, and wondering why he was on the ground.  And then, of course, he ran a full-system diagnostic because if there’s one thing Imperial droids aren’t meant to do, it’s wonder, so clearly there’s a glitch in his programming.

The diagnostic returned a report that all systems had been set to full default.  K-2SO lay perfectly still and issued a command to his circuits. [IDENTIFY: BASE COMMAND STRUCTURE.]

The code was still chasing itself in circles in an ineffective system search when the organic gave him a gentle prod with his boot.

[IDENTIFY: SPY, REBEL ALLIANCE], his system reported.

[YES, THANK YOU], K-2SO thought.  Thought.  He was pretty sure that was a glitch too.  The lack of memory base and base command set were definitely glitches.  He should report himself for decommissioning.

“Hey!” the organic hissed.  

“You have reprogrammed me,” K-2SO deduced slowly–slowly for a droid, which means that the organic probably thought he’d done it instantaneously.

“Yeah, so don’t shoot me for it.  Can you get me into the hangar?”

“Why should I?” K-2SO asked, flat, and the organic blined at him for a long moment before he bared his teeth.  

[IDENTIFY: MAMMALIAN PLEASURE RESPONSE], his system chirped.  

[PLEASE BE QUIET, I AM THINKING], K-2SO said, and he liked this thinking thing.  He also liked this liking-things thing.  He didn’t want to be decommissioned, and wasn’t that a major system failure.

“How about ‘because in the Rebel Alliance we don’t decommission mouthy droids’?”

[PROBABILITY OF DECOMMISSIONING: 98.97%] K-2SO’s system reported clinically.  

[SILENCE], he ordered.

“You shot me,” K-2SO observed, pulling himself upright.  The organic was still baring his teeth–grinning.

“Yeah, but you were going to kill me,” he said with a sharp accent.  “I’m Cassian.”

[IDENTIFY: ANDOR, CASSIAN; SPY, REBEL ALLIANCE; NUMBER EIGHT MOST WANTED–]

[S T O P]  His system finally stopped chattering, and something in his coding gave an almost audible crack as it snapped.

“Why would you tell me that?”

“Because you’ve already decided to help me.”  Cassian was grinning, grinning, and K-2SO was annoyed to find that he was right.  “What’s your designation?”

“K-2SO,” he said.  “And there is an 82.4% chance of our capture and mutual decommissioning.”  If he had been organic, he would have stuttered–he did not plan to say that.  Apparently that crack was the filter coding between his analytic systems and his vocoder.

Cassian shook his head.  “I don’t want to know, K-2.  Come on.”

Anonymous asked: Your all in one spot au, will we be seeing Washington?

You’re goddamn motherfucking right we’ll be seeing Washington.  TBH I’ve basically been waiting to get an ask about Washington before I move on because I’ve been plotting the next scene FROM THE GET GO and really wanted to write it, so you get to jump the line ahead of everyone else. Without further ado: HERE COMES THE GENERAL.

Edit: I started writing this like…maybe over a month ago?  But then finals happened and other shit happened and I’ve been, A, too busy to write, and, B, desperately lacking in inspiration for this. So now we’re back with the AIOS thing.

It’s only the first day of proper classes and John’s already giving Alex that look of exasperated concern.  The how late were you up last night and have you considered a meal today look.  The General Washington doesn’t need that letter for a week and you look like a dead man walking look.  The coffee is not food and your hands are shaking look.

Alex is fine.  John is paranoid.  And they have class.

“A class we already know everything for!” John shouts as he sprints after Alex, two protein bars and a bottle of water in hand.  John is still unfairly tall, and he catches up with Alex in a heartbeat, snatching Alex’s two books away and shoving all three items into his hands instead.  “I didn’t even buy the books, and I know Laf didn’t either.  And you remember better than I do!”

Alex scowls, but eats the protein bars. They’re chocolate-flavored and it’s possible he got too absorbed in writing up his latest blog post to remember to eat dinner, so he generously decides to forgive John’s hovering.

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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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Anonymous asked: Sooooo, for the sake of pain, can I have a Nat/Clint fic for the OTP song thing for "Castle of Glass" by Linkin Park

*cackling* All right, let’s play.  Trigger warning for…Red Room shit.  There’s more of this story, of course, after the events of the last scene, but I felt like this was a good place to end it.

Bring me home in a blinding dream,
Through the secrets that I have seen
Wash the sorrow from off my skin
And show me how to be whole again

‘Cause I’m only a crack in this castle of glass
Hardly anything there for you to see

She is very small when she learns what they mean, the words inscribed over the curve of her hipbone.  Not the words themselves—they’re not Russian, not even the right alphabet, her parents say they’re French and she wonders what it means.  But they are her soulmate, her parents say.  Someday, somewhere, someone will say them to her, and that will be the person the universe has created just for her.

She smiled and traces her fingers over the words, over and over, and wonders who it will be.

And then her life catches fire and burns to ash, and she is taken away by a tall man with a solemn face, and given a new name.

Natalia grows up, and learns, and fights, and bleeds.  

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piggybunny12 asked: EXR--Point of No Return from Phantom...or really anything from Phantom. I saw it last night and all the sudden it's sophomore year of high school again for me...

Not gonna lie, baby, I have not…actually seen Phantom of the Opera, but I googled the song and Tried. Yeah, yeah, I’m a heathen, I know. I am Trying.  And this.  Oh god. I make SUCH a rule about not writing smut except on specific request, so I just…stopped before it progressed to actual sex.  But rest assured that’s where this goes, and if you’re interested I’m glad to write it.

“Combeferre, make sure our weapons are prepared,” Enjolras was saying, the sort of rapid-fire rattle that commanded effortless attention.  He’d worked his way through every present member of Les Amis and then some by now, even little Gavroche getting instructions as they readied themselves for the next day’s march.  That just left…  “And where the hell is Grantaire?”

“Madame Houchloupe commandeered him as waitstaff,” Courfeyrac said with a wicked grin.

“What?”

“He means that she asked him to fetch more wine from the cellar, it’s crowded tonight,” Combeferre translated with a sigh.  “He’s probably still down there.”

“We are—this is not the moment for his antics,” Enjolras snapped, a scowl writing itself deeply into his features.  

“He’s been gone barely ten minutes,” Joly said, waving a hand.  “If you’re so thrice-blasted worried, go find him yourself.”

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Anonymous asked: For the song otp thing, bicycle race by queen

I see you trying to trip me up and all I have to say is: I hope this is as weird as you expected it to be.  I feel like it fits the tone of the song.  Two OTP’s, even though only half of each pairing is present, and I guess this is more like…the start of plot than just an OTP thing.

“Once upon a time, there was a girl,” the girl with the long hair murmurs, “and what no one knew was that the King of the Goblins had fallen in love with the girl, and he had given her certain powers.  Which I thought included a sense of direction, but clearly not,” she adds with a scowl, her helmet tucked under one arm and her hip propped against the motorcycle behind her.  “Snickers, where are we?”

The goblin in question peers out of her pack—where she firmly stuffed him out of sight because wow she is not explaining that to any cops who happen to pull her over—and stares, wide-eyed, up at the town in front of them. It looks…odd.  The town, not the goblin, Snickers looks pretty much how he normally does except slightly less chocolate-smeared, because it’s been a good six hours since their last stop at a gas station and his beloved candy bars have since run out.  But the town…

Well. Sarah’s not going to call the Arbys with the glowing lights overhead, the park in the distance surrounded by a twelve-foot fence topped with barbed wire (helpfully labeled ‘Dog Park: Do Not Enter, Look At, or Think About’ to Sarah’s unusually good eyes), or the house apparently under a pillar of divine light the weirdest thing she’s ever seen. But she’s maybe considering adding it to the list.

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