#cannot wait to get to him being pathetic in this. many of my wips are tav being insane to the point of desperation but THIS is his turn

[pricemarshfield]

wip wednesday babyyyy

on time and everything! i don’t Think i’ve posted this snippet before but i have been thinking of it constantly so. tagged by @a-treides , tagging @wretcheddthing @elliewilliams @pouralaura @atrueneutral aaaand anyone else who’d like to share :)

[hsvh-hp]

10 Lines Tag Game

Rules: share the first lines of ten of your most recent fanfics and tag ten people. If you have written less than ten, don’t be shy and share anyway

I hadn't really realized just how many fics I've written in the past few years until I went 'ten?!' and then looked at my library. 😂 Thanks yletylyf for the tag!

10. The first time Delphini noticed the girl, they were being led up to Hogwarts from the boathouse. In the light of Hagrid’s lantern, Delphini spotted a head of pink hair at the front of all the first-years. Pink hair was bold. Delphini was too nervous to want to stand out like that. She’d been pretending ever since Mummy and Daddy took her to King’s Cross that her hair was long, black, and curly. Delphini just wanted the Sorting Hat to tell her to go to Slytherin, then to eat dinner and go to bed. 

My current WIP! I have a lot of feelings about this one, all of them related to excitement. It's a fest fic and therefore not yet published, so I'm not sure that its current title is 100% set in stone. More importantly though, it's the first femslash I've written in nearly seven years. It's the first incest ever. 🌝 So we'll see how that goes over. But it's been a blast to write so far and I cannot wait to publish it!!

9. Although the closet Narcissa and Lucius shared was large, their clothing dampened all sound. It felt like the world ended at the walls, and like every little noise inside was that much louder. 

Another fest fic that I just finished, which should be out (anonymously, at least) in the next month or two! Between this and the current WIP, it's been such fun to write from female perspective again. I've clearly been in A Mood lately and focused on the Black family. Anyway, getting into Narcissa's head was such a joy, especially writing her as a dominant, headstrong figure when she tends to be a favourite for the delicate flower trope.

8. “Leon, no.”

Yet again, Draco set down the clothing he held in order to hoist Leon out of his suitcase. Leon went dead weight. If it wasn’t so cute, Draco would have unceremoniously tossed Leon out of his chamber and shut the door behind him. 

This is technically a WIP as well, since I took a break from it to write the two fest fics above. Spoilers for Draco's fourth year in my Canon in Draconis Major series, since these are the opening lines. I haven't published the chapters from third year yet where he sort-of-accidentally acquires a pet.

7. As soon as Peter heard Sirius’ motorcycle, he knew something was wrong. 

Like I said above about being in A Mood as far as tracking common themes during a period of my writing, this dark!Peter fic Terror By Night came during a period of letting certain Marauders off the leash and reaching for their full potential as villains! Peter's so easy in that regard - so self-serving, ruthless, and clever, if given the chance.

6. The Gryffindor common room was abuzz in its usual fashion as Peter crossed it. Sitting alone in a corner, looking pathetic in his dejection, was Sirius. He looked up from the piece of parchment he idly stabbed with the tip of his quill.  

Oh, poor pathetic and lonely Sirius in Life in the Rift. 🥺 Another Peter POV fic, although not as dark as the previous. I let Peter explore his potential here for friendship and forgiveness, and how that could be corrupted in time.

5. Bellatrix and Rodolphus’ wedding thus far reminded Sirius of every single pureblood one he’d attended in past. It was held at the same venue, with the same people in attendance—as far as the Black family went, anyway. 

This comes from None So Vile, my Dark!Sirius fic. Now he was a fun one to let off the leash. I catch myself daydreaming all the time about its two sequel fics. I won't be free of this little 'verse until they're eventually written.

4. Although the early morning humidity had departed from the manor land, Draco wiped his damp forehead. Standing in shade helped to cool him down, but the thick trousers and wellies he wore worked to the contrary.

It sort of floors me that the longfic I'm in the process of posting is so far down the list! I finished writing it in October, and I guess I've been a busy little bee in the meantime. This is the opening line of Draco Malfoy and the Will to Power, my canon compliant interpretation of Prisoner of Azkaban from Draco's POV.

3. The day started like any other for Draco. He woke up, had tea and toast, and then dressed for work. He threw some Floo powder into his home’s fireplace, which turned the temporary flames a cerulean blue. Draco stepped through into his office in the Department of Mysteries. 

Across the Multiverse, the most popular fic I've ever written. I hope another day comes where I get to write Draco as an Unspeakable! He was so fun, especially since that career track didn't hold him to any sort of morality. I have...feelings...about redemption arcs, so it was fun to write Draco as unconcerned about that personal path post-war. Why should he try to redeem himself when, had he done so, Ron Weasley would be dead? That was something Harry had to answer in this fic.

2. Sunday night family dinner at Malfoy Manor went about how it usually did. Cutlery clinked up and down the formal dining room table, the odd chuckle punctuating murmured conversation. Although Bellatrix sat as closely to Aunt Lucretia to her right as Rodolphus to her left, it felt like a chasm separated her and Rod from the rest of tonight’s company. 

Bella, my beloved, in Almost Human. Writing from her perspective was a joyful exploration of villain protagonists. She gets what she wants more than anything at cost of destroying Andromeda's life, which for her was a happy ending, and...yeah. Love that crazy bitch. lol

1.The Lower City smelled like absolutely nothing Draco had ever experienced before. The streets themselves were dingy with grime. He pitied the state of the bottom of his boots. They might never be clean again. 

This is my 'least popular' Drarry fic (does such a thing honestly exist?) Flesh of the Serpent, but it has a special place in my heart! Well, every fic I write does. This was the first HP fest fic I ever wrote, and I learned early on in that venture that I don't bother signing up for fests unless I'm either completely gripped by an idea or I already had a fic in the idea pile that a fest would give me an excuse to write. This one belonged to the former category.

Which, funnily enough, brings us back full circle to the two fest fics that aren't yet published - both of which the ideas utterly gripped me for and I had to write them right now at all cost of my current projects and social life.

...I can't believe that all of these fics, spare I think about half of Across the Multiverse, were written within the last year. Maybe I need to get a life.

Nah. 😂

[deepdarkwaters]

Kingsman: The Golden Circle

Got back from the Kingsman double bill a bit ago and am trying to put my brain into words even though I'm very tired and a bit numb and I smuggled five hours' worth of gin into the cinema in an Evian bottle so I'm as drunk as Harry at breakfast time.

OBVIOUSLY THERE ARE SPOILERS BELOW

Watching them back to back like this was interesting because it highlighted so clearly how much better the first one is than this fumbly ridiculous sequel. Not saying it's not good or not worth watching or whatever because it absolutely is worth watching for several reasons I will babble after another teacup of gin, but holy god is this really the best they could come up with? REALLY? A 100% true fact that I believe with my entire heart: YOU reading this, you are a better writer than people being paid obscene money to write films. I could easily name thirty fic writers off the top of my head right now who have an infinitely better grasp on pacing and plot and characterisation and dialogue than the people responsible for this stuff. I've not read any press or fan reviews but I imagine there's going to be a hell of a lot of backlash over so much in this from every angle because it's just so incredibly lazy and sometimes ugly and absolutely cannot stand up to its own hype.

Really good things:

* SPECTACULAR, EH!

* Eggsy/Harry and Eggsy/Merlin shippers, goddamn we have a lot of new stuff to work with. Chemistry through the roof, especially Eggsy/Harry (including possibly the best clingy desperate hug I have ever seen on film in my entire life WE HAVE WAITED SO LONG AND IT'S HERE AND IT'S BEAUTIFUL). That was the heart and backbone of the first film, I'm so relieved that it's not only survived but evolved into something fiercer and often messier. So so good to watch. Pretty sure I've got Harry/Merlin written down the inside of my heart like the words in a stick of rock, and though it's not romantic you get much more of a sense of their friendship here and it's all just a bit shattering and gorgeous.

* Pretty much everything to do with Harry's memory loss and Eggsy and Merlin trying to shock him into remembering was great, Y E S  P L E A S E. And Harry's matter of fact comments about his loneliness, fuckkk. Angst writers, go forth with all this new information and break my heart some more! Fluff writers, fix him!

* Lots of beautiful intricate fight choreography which is literally all I need in my action films, so even if I did think the rest was complete balls (which I don't entirely) then I'd still be happy. Nothing comes near the vivid glorious gutpunch of the church scene as a standalone set piece, BUT there's so much Harry & Eggsy teamwork and please just inject this directly into my veins, it's amazing. Prepare for several years of me writing many more elaborate fight scenes than I already do.

* Part B to the above: Whiskey is a lot of fun and his fighting style is full on hardcore pornography to me.

* Merlin in a flawless Kingsman suit, RIP me.

* One of my Bespoke WIPs is about Merlin and Eggsy getting into the habit of going to the pub together sometimes and rolling home completely drunk with a kebab in each hand then trying to get in the house really quietly because Harry's asleep but they end up waking him because they think it'll be really nice to cook him breakfast in bed and Harry comes stomping downstairs in his dressing gown like "it's four o'fucking clock, put those frying pans away and drink some water!" while Merlin and Eggsy side eye each other and try not to giggle. So maudlin singing drunk Merlin was very nice to see :P

* Eggsy and Roxy bromance. There’s such lovely chemistry between them as well, it feels so natural and real, and it’s so good (and miserably rare) to see platonic friendships that aren’t shoehorned into some shitty boring love triangle.

* Eggsy and Tilde were seriously adorable. It ended up not at all satisfying as a romance plot arc because it was like CUTE - fight - marriage, it needed so much more screen time. Like all the important stuff was there, but it was just so abrupt. Include a satisfying romance or don't include one at all, fuck your lazy bullet points. But it started so well and I hope there's a ton of fic that treats them better than the script did. I appreciate the anti-Bond-ness of it all, that Eggsy's genuinely in love and wants to settle and is figuring out how that and his job can possibly fit together, especially with the complications of marrying into royalty. Interested to see where they take that if there's another film. Until then, soo much scope for fic.

* I'm shipping Harry/Elton like burning.

* Poppy was terrifying in a vaguely Umbridge-ish way. That sort of characterisation is always freaky, Julianne was great. So glossy and cheerful but absolutely dead in the eyes. And I'm ambivalent on Charlie, but I ABSOLUTELY want lots of brutal older woman villain/pathetic younger male minion smut. Please provide asap.

* T H E   M Y T H I C A L  B R E A K F A S T   S C E N E   I S   R E A L

Really bad things: well where the merry fuck do I start haha.

* I will never ever understand why they thought it was a good idea to wipe out all the locations and almost all the existing characters at the very beginning. It's lazy shitty writing. If you feel like you need to shake up your fictional world you don't just knock it all down and start over. It's cheap and very shallow angst.

* I only have two middle fingers but I need about seventeen million to even begin to profess my disgust at them killing Roxy. I knew it was going to happen, it was the only spoiler I asked someone for ahead of time and it was not at all a surprise to find out for sure. Still utterly infuriating. The way people responded so positively to her in the first one is a real indication of how ridiculously low the bar is for female characters in action films ("good at something" and "not the hero's love interest" are literally the only two requirements), and JG/MV didn't even think enough of her to follow through on the absolute base level achievement they made before. Fuck everyarse involved in this decision.

* Absolutely revolting honeypot mission scene. Not really the fact that it exists, just the entire way it was handled and shot - so predictably male-gazey and laddishly "waheyyy!" that it kind of turned my stomach. Horrible and completely unnecessary.

* A million new characters and not enough time spent on any of them to care. Tequila was barely more than a cameo. Champ and Ginger hardly had anything to do. All the Statesmen (except Whiskey) were completely two dimensional and it's such a jarring contrast to the obvious care taken over Eggsy, Merlin, and Harry. It's not even because we already know them, I don't think? It's weird to try and explain. The Statesman characters just feel so rushed and shallow, there's no substance to any of them. Kill off Roxy and replace her with paper cut-outs, ok that makes loads of sense!!! Whiskey’s a level up from the others because he gets loads more screen time and some beautiful fight scenes, but his ~emotional plot twist fell completely flat. I don’t know what it was, the pacing or a boring cliche backstory or what. It was just dull as fuck. WE HAVE HEARD THIS EXACT STORY FIVE MILLION TIMES.

A bad thing that's somehow not really a bad thing even though I'm fucking numb and want a hug:

* I've been raving for ages to people about Roxy being killed off and trying to figure out a way to satisfactorily explain how I feel about a character dying for a reason and a character dying because a writer is a lazy bastard who wants some quick angst. Merlin's death was an A+ wonderful death along the lines of my dear fictional boyfrends Quincey Morris and Lee Scoresby and a million others. Maybe it comes from all the swashbuckly historical adventure stories I grew up loving, but I'm a desperate sucker for a good noble death. Characters brave and self-aware enough to look at the bigger picture of an impossible situation and realise that their death means a better outcome for the people they love? This is ABSOLUTE CATNIP to me. Characters who go down fighting to the very end. If a character I love with my entire soul has to die, this is how I want it to happen. Give them some agency and a proper goodbye.

I mean I fully expect him to be magically resurrected with fancy prosthetic legs if there's another film because we saw those wedding set photos of him in the nice neon green cgi stockings, so really I should be saying "death". I totally reject this one. (I reject Roxy and JB's deaths as well, but the big difference is I really can't see the filmmakers bringing them back. Eyeroll.) Maybe that's what's making it easier to deal with? A not-real noble courageous self-sacrificing death. That's about as good as it gets. All three of them get Oscars for this whole sequence.

Anyway the tl;dr of it is:

This film is a very beautiful, very patchy mess. The good stuff is absolutely gloriously perfectly incredibly wonderful. Most of said good stuff is the interaction between Eggsy, Merlin, and Harry, which is written and performed with real care and heart. Nearly everything else is relatively lacklustre filler, misogyny, and shitty nonsensical decisions. These people cannot write women.

I liked it? I will definitely see it 900 more times, mainly for wet terrified Harry and gorgeous fight scenes. But ffs, how can it possibly be this difficult to pinpoint the reasons why people loved your extremely successful creation and consider including them in future plans?

I'm feeling fairly zen about everything. I kind of trained myself ages ago to think of sequels as just another bit of fanfic, so it's going to make absolutely no difference to the cheerful fluff porn and fight scenes I like to write. What I'm annoyed about isn't so much to do with ~new canon~ limiting what we're allowed to create for ourselves now, because that's just silly. It's more about being pissed off at the shoddy state of action films, particularly women in action films, when it seems like it should be SO EASY to take these astronomical budgets and create something groundbreaking. I'm so tired of this unimaginative lazy narrow-minded bullshit.

[crookedspoonfic]

WIP Day #3

Your Canon-Verse WIP.

I give up. There are still two hours left in the day, but that’s not nearly enough time for me to beat this thing into shape. Instead, I’ll give you a peek.

I don’t know if this actually counts as canon, because I made up all of it. My goal was to try and keep the character dynamic more or less canon-compliant, but uhh, I think we don’t get to canon events in this snippet.

Fandom: The Raven Cycle Characters/Pairings: Kavinsky (+Ronan) Rating: Mature for child abuse, bullying, homophobia, drug abuse, and being wacky in the head, I suppose

When I started this: October 2016, in one form or another When I last touched it: March 2017

But first, another of my unnecessary and unnecessarily long comments: This grew out of my first try at TRC fic, which thankfully never made it to the light of day. It was that obligatory canon character study, but it was terrible. I repurposed some lines for a rewrite and tried different approaches, like splitting it up and using the individual parts for other projects, which is probably why the mood is all over the place.

For the purpose of this WIP challenge, I stitched some back together and added some ideas I had regarding K’s potential backstory. Today’s edit also weirdly turned the mood in this from rather sad to slightly dark and fucked up. Go me.

Under the cut, you’ll find nearly 2k of “idk what this is, whether it makes sense, or if I should continue to work on it.” (I pretty much just like stacking words on top of one another and wait for them to topple into place.)

Enjoy. If you can.

You tell yourself you haven't always been this pathetic.

You've spent many hours in grand stupors, passed out on bathroom floors, hallways, stairs even, waking to a pain in your head, your joints, your heart that would only grow worse over time unless you get another fix -- to alleviate the emotional impact if not the physical one -- and sometimes you don't because you're unable to move, unable to do anything but sink deeper into the pit of despair that lurks so far below the surface mere cutting tools don't reach it.

Yeah, you've been there and you've grown used to it, used to starting awake in strangers' cars, in stranger's beds, on strange piles of shards and other things with jagged, rending edges, like yesterday's trash, broken and forgotten.

You've grown used to starting awake to strangers in your house, on your floor, your bed, (you -- like your body's a blow-up doll and no longer yours when your consciousness vacates it for a while,) used to loud music, fast cars, and neon strobe lights, used to having crowds around you, fawning over you, spewing the same sycophantic bullshit as anyone else, while their drinks slosh dangerously in their cups and their fingers find their way into your hair, your mouth, your pockets, turned inside out in search for what only you can give them: the ride of their lives.

Disorientation became your game and you played it till you won.

It was a way of life and you were living it, disregarding that you were already dead inside.

You've been in a string of pathetic situations before you learned to ride the buzz and not let it ride you, before you learned that staying high and staying in control were not mutually exclusive even if it was fun for a time to give up one for the other. Keeps you on your toes.

Going up, you never worried about coming down. You never worried about anything.

So, you've been fucked up a lot, but you've never felt as fucked up as you do now, empty and shaking and so alone. There are texts on your phone, but your thumbs too numb to open them, the screen is screeching at your eyes, and the messages are garbled as if the words had been thrown into a blender. They don't go through to you.

Inside your chest, a nauseating merry-go-round made of razor wire is slicing at you, whittling you away, carving you hollow.

You like to think you haven't always been this way. That there's a progression to these things.

Yours seems inevitable enough.

You still remember the days before now, before this, before everything, although you try your best to erase them, line by fucking line. It's easier to forget than to go running around with all that baggage. Who needs that shit anyway?

You were a sweet-faced boy, the aunts told you, by which they meant you look like a girl. You hated that.

They weren't your aunts, but wives of the men who worked for your father, and they came by to keep your mother company when he was away. Or busy. Or both. Which was all the time. You thought of them as a flock of birds for their matching outfits, their gleaming jewelry, their impeccable hair, the way they tittered and they cooed, and how you've never seen one arrive without the others.

So they perched on the sofa and the armchairs, coffee cups daintily placed on their saucers, and they sang their merry tune of how lucky your mother was for having such a sweet boy, such an angel, he does so take after you, dear. They simpered, pinched your cheeks, ruffled your hair, and you hated it at the time, hated that you had to be still and smile and endure it, because if you did, they'd stop fussing sooner instead of later, growing bored with you as if you sort of faded in the background.

But you liked the attention all the same. At least somebody noticed you for a while.

*

The aunts brought their sons, if they had them, and brought toys if they didn't. Action figures, toy cars, dinosaurs, whatever they'd been told young boys your age were crazy about. Or they brought stories about how they would also like a son, a healthy, strong son, because their husbands wanted one, so that is what they should want, too. Maybe they did, but you couldn't tell, you could only overhear bits and pieces when you sneaked into the kitchen to get away from the other boys.

You were supposed to be playing with them, be nice to them, but they weren't nice to you, so why should you care? You were small, you were fine-boned and you were pretty, and nobody liked you.

But it was okay, you didn't like them either.

Except that you did, in ways you didn't understand at the time, because nobody told you about these things and you never had the chance to figure them out for yourself.

Maybe they didn't like the implications of you, maybe you made them feel something they weren't supposed to feel, maybe there's always been something despicable about you. Maybe that was it. All you know is that they teased you, that they made you cry because of it, and that your father didn't want a cry-baby for a son. He never called you his son, he called you other things that took you years to understand, things that the boys in your backyard echoed before they wrestled you to the ground and stuffed sticks and soil and sand into your mouth and made you swallow.

You still remember their names or what names they called you, what they looked like,

what they made you feel.

Your father never said anything to the boys or their fathers. Why would he? It would draw attention to what a pathetic weakling you were and he was probably too ashamed of you already. His preferred method of making sure you wouldn't get beat up again was taking the matter out of their hands. You earned yourself a clout whenever he caught you sniveling, sometimes even if it was from a cold, and sometimes he wouldn't stop until you stopped.

Sometimes you wondered if he wanted you to stop completely.

You were supposed to stand up for yourself, that was the understanding.

Your mother didn't like how he ruined your face, you were her handsome boy after all, but she also did nothing to stop him. That was fine with you. If he used his fists on you, maybe he wouldn't have to use them on her. (That was before she took to hitting you as well, you devil child, you cursed evil thing, when you still had some loyalty in you, some sense of solidarity.) He never hit <em>her </em>face, but a shiner or two on yours were okay because it detracts from your looks and adds character. Simple as that.

It's a lesson you took to heart and made use of at school. Your father liked to see you get into fights, liked it when you came home with scarred knuckles and split skin, when you proved to him you were a man after all and worthy of being called his son.

You stare into the mirror. Nothing stares back. You're seeing through yourself, at the wall in the back, or maybe the back of your head. It's dark in there, it must be, you cannot see the light.

You're covered in gasoline and someone struck a match. Your skin is burning.

This is what his touch must feel like. Around your throat, squeezing the life out of you. Whatever life there is left of you.

You splash some water on your face and it reappears in the mirror.

Pretty thing, they used to call you. They used to beat you up for it, as if your looks were somehow offensive to them.

No one would call you pretty now, with your sunken cheeks, broken nose and bloodshot eyes, and you prefer it that way.

You conceal the damage of last night and the many nights before with white sunglasses and a grin that's as changeable as your mood while it remains one thing at its core. An impenetrable fortress.

Your parents may have taught you something useful, after all.

There must have been a time when you thought your parents loved you, that they just couldn't show it in words or gestures, so they showered you with gifts to distract you from their emptiness that was becoming your emptiness.

"You need to stop spoiling him," they told each other when they thought you couldn't hear, but they never did.

When you woke up to yet another gift on your pillow, one you've been wishing for very hard but never had the chance to tell them about, you thought it was their way of saying sorry for being so distant. You thought it was their way of soothing you after your nightmares.

You were delighted by it when you were very small, and put off by it as you grew older, because you saw it as a cheap ploy to buy your loyalty. Fuck that.

Until you noticed they didn't get you anything.

"You're spoiling him too much. He's soft enough."

"I thought you got him this toy."

The answer to this riddle, however, was a much better gift than anything they could have given you.

You know now that every gift comes with strings attached. And sometimes, those strings are darkness itself.

Come to think of it, your mother never hit you before your very existence started to threaten her sanity. Not that she'd had much of it to begin with, but your dreaming didn't exactly help. It only exacerbated it. And then, when you killed your father and he still continued living after that, well, that was the end of it. She never let you live that one down.

Or she wouldn't, if you kept her sedated any less. She prefers the brain fog to the knowledge of what you are, too. Otherwise she could have left a long time ago. Tried to, in fact, but even with her means, she was unable to find anything that killed her brain that what you provided for free.

Family discount.

You've had enough to drink for a lifetime, but there's a restlessness eating you up from inside that you need to douse and you know just the thing to do it with.

It comes in a plain vodka bottle, looks and tastes like lighter fuel, and the fumes alone are enough to intoxicate you three ways from Sunday.

The best part about it, however, is how much it burns. Every swig of that hellish concoction is another splash of kerosene onto that ever-raging fire that is consuming the very fiber of your being.

You know who you have to thank for stoking it, for making it so unbearable to take another goddamn fucking breath.

Family, you think. It's more of a curse than a thought, really. But it rams itself into your head with the force of a sledgehammer.

Family. Now there's an idea.

[mostfacinorous]

First Contact- The Winter Prince and Soldier

Happy Birthday to Lena, my beautiful friend, wonderful cowriter, favorite artist, and the sticky glue that keeps my favorite corner of fandom together. 

She has a pet AU that she has written about fairly extensively, and I have an ongoing WIP fic that I knew there was no way to finish by her birthday, so here’s a little snippet. 

First Contact

Less than a week after they had cleared out another of HYDRA’s nests, seeking yet more answers about who and what The Asset truly was, they found themselves cornered.

The last hive had had references to this location, one which had one of the chairs that was spoken of in the files on The Asset-- their means of controlling him, of forcing him to be docile and obedient.

Their way of taking away all that he was slowly becoming, under Loki’s care.

And The Avengers suddenly wanted to stop Loki from helping The Asset to understand.  

Unacceptable.

He locked eyes with The Captain and snarled.

“Asset… end him.”

The words were easy, his assurance complete. He loved watching the Asset work, and he knew how obedient, how perfect and fast the Asset would be.

Captain America had been bothersome of late. That would end now.

So he nearly felt his mouth fall open, in surprise, in shock, when instead--

“No.”

Never a man of many words, The Asset stepped between him and The Captain, and Loki could do nothing but blink at the back of his head. His mask had fallen at some point, and his face was unshielded.

That proved to be their undoing.

“Steve?” The Captain asked, voice low and quiet and shaky. “What did he do to you?”

The Asset tensed.

“Who the hell is Steve?” He asked.

The Captain just shook his head and looked to Loki.

“I don’t know what you’re playing at,” he began, voice low and dangerous, but Loki cut him off.

“I? What are you playing at? Asset, destroy him! That is an order.”

“Can’t. We should go.”

The Asset turned and took Loki’s arm, pulling him away. Loki, surprised, whipped his head around to stare at The Captain, hardly trusting him not to attack while their backs were turned. But he didn’t. Indeed, he dropped his shield and pulled off his helm. Even so, Loki sent the slightest of spells his way, hardly more than a whisper of magic, which went unnoticed in The Captain’s singular focus on The Asset.

“Steve,” he called out, “Wait, wait up you jerk. It’s me. It’s Bucky!”

He started forward, but The Asset did not turn back, and Loki had seen enough. He gathered himself and took hold of The Asset and pulled, taking them both far from Bucky and the problem that he represented.

Whoever he was, whoever Steve was, it had stopped The Asset from obeying. Which was not acceptable.

It was a weakness, a flaw, and one Loki needed to understand so that he could fix it immediately.

“What was that?” He demanded, as soon as they were safely back inside of their current ‘home’.

The Asset knelt, lowering his head and pressing his hands to his thighs..

Expecting punishment, no doubt-- and not that he didn’t deserve it, but that wasn’t what Loki was concerned with at the moment.

“Get up.” He snapped.

The Asset did as he was told. Obedient now, but not when it counted.

Loki stared at him, uncertain how to go about piecing through this puzzle.

“Why did you not kill him?” He finally asked, the heat mostly gone from his voice.

The Asset stared back, holding his silence a few beats too long.

“I don’t know.” He said quietly.

“Do you know him? Or did you?” Loki asked.

This, the Asset considered, the perfect calm that took his face for the most part now broken, his brows furrowing. For a moment, he looked lost and so utterly human. It was disarming, disquieting.

“Well?” Loki snapped.

“I… knew him.” He said slowly. “Only… I don’t…” He made a low noise of frustration, and Loki flinched, not having realized just how on edge he was-- all of this had made him jumpy. And The Asset didn’t miss it, looking at Loki almost as if he felt… hurt.

“You didn’t obey. I gave you a direct order.” Loki didn’t know why he was explaining anything, much less his own reactions. Not when The Asset had so much to answer for.

“I-- couldn’t. Who--” he licked his lips and lifted his eyes to look Loki squarely in the face, something he still usually avoided.. “Who is Steve?”

“How should I know?” Loki snarled. “But you had best figure it out, because the next time you see that man, I want him dead. Are we clear?”

The Asset hesitated.

“But… I knew him. He knew me.” He mumbled, and Loki felt himself begin to shake, though with fear or rage, he couldn’t say.

Even now, even without The Captain before him, he was refusing. Disobedient.

How long would he retain any semblance of usefulness, like this?

How long would Loki be safe?

Was he safe now?

“See to your weapons.” He ordered. His voice shook, and The Asset looked to him again, again with that same expression of hurt. But he did as he was told, maybe sensing that Loki needed that from him now.

Cold comfort though it was.

That night, Loki warded the door of the room where he slept for the first time since he’d brought The Asset back from HYDRA.

It let him sleep easier, though he knew that given enough wish to, The Asset could simply crash through the walls instead.

Still, he’d have warning. Which was all he could ask, when sharing a house with a ticking bomb.

He flipped through the book he’d found, the manual for The Asset, but short of using the tools that he had not seen fit to bring with him, he saw no way of resetting things. Of turning his soldier back into what he’d been before.

Not, he reflected idly and half asleep, that he wanted him as he’d first been. Instead he wanted what he’d become… or what he’d been on his way to becoming, before the Captain had ruined everything.

He did finally fall asleep, only to be awakened by a siren.

The smoke alarm, to be specific, he realized as he became more alert.

He took stock quickly.

It was morning, early yet, but decidedly on the opposite side of night from when he’d laid down.

He got to his feet and breached the barrier he’d erected, magic gathered in his palm and weight shifted forward, ready to fight-- or flee.

The words to send the soldier to the floor stood ready on the tip of his tongue.

What he found, though, was a small fire inside of the oven, food splattered on the floor, on the walls, and dripping from the ceiling, and the Asset holding a pot that had clearly recently been full of water, used in a lame attempt of putting it out.He seemed to be cowering from the flames, despite their relative smallness, and Loki only felt more annoyed at that. He gestured and the flames died instantly, smothered by magic. The smell remained, as did the idiot who’d caused all of this in the first place.

“What is the meaning of this?” Loki demanded, eyes catching on the clock over the stove-- 4am.

The Asset swallowed, and Loki followed the bob of his throat, oddly gratified by the reaction. He sent the magic he held upwards, shutting off the shrill scream of the detector.  

“I wanted to have breakfast ready for you.”

The Asset spoke lowly, the way one would to keep from waking someone.

Only it was vastly too late for that.

And in the aftermath of the loudness, The Asset’s quiet only added to the image of him as something pathetic.

A problem.

Loki sneered.

“You cannot follow orders. You cannot care for yourself, let alone me, and failing in all of that, you cannot even allow me to sleep.” He huffed angrily. “I should send you away. Perhaps give you to Captain America-- he seemed to think he wanted you. What do you think? Perhaps you’d like to try to burn his house down?”

The soldier had squared his shoulders and straightened his spine, and now stared straight ahead, face gone blank. It was almost enough to convince Loki that he was back in control, save the tightness at the corners of his eyes, and the way he kept darting glanced directly at Loki, as though he thought he might not notice.

“I don’t know what to do with you.” Loki pressed on. “You don’t do what I ask of you,  claiming you can’t when we both know you’re more than capable, and now you’re trying to do things that you can’t do, that I didn’t ask. Has your mind gone fully to mush? Perhaps they fried it a few times too many.”

The Asset stirred, shifted from foot to foot, and looked like he wanted to say something. Loki waited, impatient but unwilling to order him to speak, unwilling to make it easier for him.

“I don’t want you to send me away.” He said, finally. “I’m trying to learn to be more useful. To make up for what I couldn’t do. Can’t do.”

“Won’t do.” Loki corrected, crossing his arms. “And so you think that if you can master cooking, it will forgive your refusal-- again, not inability-- refusal, to kill the Captain. Is that it?”

The Asset stared at him.

Loki let out his breath slowly, struggling for control of his annoyance.

“Perhaps you need to be reminded of how much you still need me-- not only to put out your very literal fires--” Loki gestured at the oven, “but for food. Shelter. A purpose.”

The Asset looked downwards, but nodded.

And his game now, of obedience and humility, only grated on Loki’s nerves. He reached out and took hold of his metal arm where it met his neck and pulled The Asset away, dragging them both further than any distance he’d taken them before.

When their feet touched firm ground mere moments later, they were in a forest, far from any life that Loki had been able to sense. Loki released the Asset quickly and stepped backwards.

“You sleep here while I find somewhere new for us to live. And if you ruin another apartment, I’ll bring you here and not come back.” His threat was low and quiet, but without the city sounds around him, The Asset couldn’t miss it.

“No--” He said, reaching out, but Loki stepped away before he could touch him, refusing to be swayed by the panic he heard in The Asset’s voice.

If he was going to become useless by being treated as some sort of pet instead of as a weapon, then he wouldn’t survive in the forest for a few hours, and Loki wouldn’t have to be the one to kill him. He wouldn’t have to lose any sleep to twinges of conscience, or risk being thought weak himself, for giving in to his gentler nature.

And if he did survive, perhaps the lesson would sink in-- the man he served was worth serving, powerful and kind, a good provider. This would merely be a reminder for him.

 Still, Loki didn’t immediately go off in search of their new apartment. Rather, he paced in the ruined kitchen of their current one.

They’d been in search of clues to The Asset’s identity-- and they had found one. A large one.

Captain America knew who he was. Had called him Steve.

Loki grimaced in distaste.

Human names were always awkward on his tongue, but this one seemed particularly bitter and ill-fitting.

Nothing that moved like The Asset could should be called anything so base as Steve. It sounded like the sort of disease one contracted in a brothel. Steve.

But it also meant that the one person that Loki felt most threatened by was now the person they would need to seek out.

No.

The person he would need to seek out. Better not to tempt The Asset further. After all, who was to say that the next time, ‘Bucky’ wouldn’t give the same order Loki had, this time with better effect?

Better that he go now, without The Asset in tow. Learn all he could, and give him the answers he was after. And then maybe… maybe things would be right, and they could go back to the way things should be.

He could only hope.

Loki pulled the pot from the sink and filled it with water, tracking the magic he’d attached to The Captain that day and summoning his image into the liquid.

He was in the tower of the Iron Man, and of course he was.

And equally of course, he wasn’t alone.

Loki watched as The Widow consoled him, took in his body language-- hunched and defeated looking.

But it was clear they had been at it for some time, because as the sun began to rise, The Captain sent The Widow away and wandered off to his own quarters, pulling his shirt up as he went.

Loki went, too, appearing only once his door was closed and warding it against the interference of any of his teammates.

By the time The Captain’s shirt was, off, Loki had a knife to his throat. Almost immediately, a siren began to blare. Loki ignored it, though, more interested in The Captain, and what he had to say.

“I want to know what you know of my Soldier. And you had better speak quickly-- the longer he is alone, the more of a danger he is to himself.”

Not precisely true, but it was at least a good motivator-- and would make The Captain think twice before trying to steal him away.

“How--” He started, but Loki shook his head, pressing the knife more firmly to his skin as his fellows began to beat futilely against his shields on the door.

“Faster than that. Who is Steve?”

The Captain swallowed, and his already reddened eyes seemed suddenly wetter. Loki had little patience for hysterics, though, and twisted the blade ever so slightly.

“Steve Rogers was my best friend, growing up. We were-- practically brothers. He was the first Captain America. He-- he died saving me from HYDRA seventy years ago.”

Loki scoffed.

“Clearly not.” He said shortly. The Captain glared, but Loki pressed on. “How did he ‘die’?”

“The building was collapsing, it was on fire. He made me go ahead, tried to follow… but the floor gave out. He fell seven stories into a chemical based inferno. He couldn’t-- that can’t be--” He stopped, voice catching.

“He survived.” Loki told him, making his words blunt so that they would cause more damage as they twisted through the Captain’s mind, even after he was gone.

“He came to save you, and you abandoned him in return. I’m sure you noticed the scarring on him… you can believe me when I say it goes all the way down. Save on that arm… which is missing. What do you suppose? Do you think the fire claimed it? Or do you think HYDRA took it from him later, sometime in the seventy years that they had him?”

His words were cruel, but he couldn’t believe the Captain had been so stupid.

All of the pain that The Asset had gone through, the things in those files… had his friend just stayed, looked for a body…

He felt protective, and angry for it.

“Stop it!” Captain America growled, and Loki bared his teeth.

“How many times do you suppose your best friend, your brother begged them to stop? Have you any idea what they did to him? Torture, training, electrocution, freezing… if you had any idea the lives he’s taken, the things he’s done and the things he was punished for at their hands…” Inspired, Loki raised his free hand, dumping the files from their apartment onto The Captain’s bed.

He took the knife away and stepped back.

“As far as I am concerned, you have lost all claim you may once have had on him. He has no idea who he was, nor who you are. And were I you, I would be glad of it. He does not know how much he should hate you for what you damned him to.” Loki put a sickeningly pleasant smile on his face.

“I do, however. And if you come near him again, I’ll kill you myself.”

Outside, the beating on the door continued, but their force changed, and Loki saw, from the corner of his eye, the man of Iron headed for the glass of the window.

Not waiting to be outnumbered, he left the files and pulled himself away.

He still had a home to find, before he could bring his Asset back to it.

But now he had an ace in his sleeve, all the information he would need to break The Asset’s fascination with The Captain. Any ties they once had could easily be shattered with just a few words at the right moment.

And he had the seed of information. A name.  No doubt from that, he would be able to learn more of who The Asset had been, where he had come from, before his brother had let him fall.

It seemed the two of them had a thing or two in common, after all.

 He was getting better at this, becoming more accustomed to the signs of a long term untendedness. This one belonged to a couple who split their time, from one side of the continent to the other, and right now they were closer to the setting sun. Which left he and the Asset with the perfect place to stay in the city for the next several months, provided they could lay low enough to remain there.

They were close enough that Loki could make a habit of watching The Avengers, but far enough that they didn’t risk stumbling upon one of them in a grocery store, provided they lowered themselves to doing their own shopping.

There was a lot he didn’t know about them, he realized, and it was an uncomfortable realization.

He made the changes he deemed necessary, mainly a quiet shuffling of the walls, all of which could be reversed, if he cared enough. And all of which were designed to put the room he’d chosen for himself at the center of the building. Tactically defended from the outside, and each wall had an appliance or a fireplace, or a shower against it, one more thing to get in the way of the Soldier if he did go rogue.

 And speaking of the Asset, Loki decided it was high time to reclaim him.

 He returned, surprised to find that The Asset hadn’t moved, despite his having been gone for hours. He wasn’t sleeping, but that was perhaps less surprising; after all, alone in an unfamiliar place, he didn’t know how well he would be able to sleep either.

“Come, Asset. I have a new home for us.” He said, holding his hand out.

The Asset did not take it, nor did he stand. He just sat there, arms wrapped around his knees.

“I thought you didn’t want me.” He said, the words not quite a question.

Loki had a few different answers ready, but chose to bit his tongue and think them through. It did not take him long to choose the best of them.

“I do not keep around things or people that I find to be without use.” He paused there, looking down his nose at the Asset, waiting to see if he would argue for his worth. He didn’t.  

“But you are not without use, are you? Stubborn, perhaps. Misguided, certainly. And you have been poorly wielded in the past. It galls me to find how little you have been trained in, outside of murder. You have the capacity for more. And I intend to help you learn it. Starting with the ability to care for yourself, so that the next time I need to run an errand on my own, I do not have to leave you alone in the forest to ensure you do not burn a building down around yourself.”

The Asset had the grace to look ashamed, at that, and perhaps a touch concerned, and for it Loki forgave him.

“Now stand, Asset. Let’s go home. I’ve purchased the necessities to make breakfast. I am going to teach you the preparation of omelettes.”

This time, the Asset took his hand and stood, allowing Loki to whisk them off to their new temporary housing.

And, Loki reasoned, if they focused on The Asset, on bettering him, then maybe he would forget the questions and confusion that The Captain had created in him.

And it would keep them beneath The Captain’s awareness, while Loki watched, and learned, and researched the identity of Steve Rogers, and how he had survived to become The Asset, and lost everything he had been along the way.

Loki had the beginning of the story, the end of it, and scattered pieces of the middle. He just needed to complete the picture before Captain America did, so that he could shape the truth to his means.

Before he could lose his Asset to The Captain’s truth.

So while The Asset’s mind was fixed on fishing egg shells out of cloudy yellow viscous liquid, Loki was scheming. Planning.

And working on thinking of ways to make The Asset more loyal to him than he could possibly be to a past he did not recall, a face he could not place, or a name that was less his own than his current lack of one.