#eventually may write it from Joe's POV but that's just too sad

[histrionic-dragon]

Father’s Day Double Drabble

 (Warning: bittersweet)

 It wasn’t my fault, okay? I couldn’t have known. We were spot-checking all over the timeline, and all of the Avengers were volunteering for random things. Everyone was careful to not cross their own timeline to avoid any “OMG, it’s my evil twin” scenarios, but the temporospatial coordinates for this mission were not going to be a problem for this one. It was 1917 and not in the US. He double-checked to confirm the rules and safeguards for interacting with locals. I sent him and his team through. No problems.

Later, Sergeant Barnes stopped by and asked me where Steve was. Usually, if he’s in the compound he’s either in the gym or the offices, and Barnes must have expected me to say one of those, because he did a double-take when I told him about the mission. His face went sort of still before he nodded and thanked me and walked away. I maintain that that still wasn’t a red flag. Maybe he had something he wanted to talk with Cap about and was upset that he wasn’t around. Things happen.

Teams started reporting in about then—the usual reports of “all clear,” no lasting effects of whatever removing the Time Stone from the timeline seemed to have done. I logged it all and relayed key points to check out. Around the room from me, I could see and hear my colleagues doing the same. Sometimes I feel like we’re just a fancy call center—text center? You can send messages through time and space, but not voice, yet. Stark swears he’s working on it. Anyway, everything seemed to be going fine.

Then Cap’s team started reporting that they’d lost track of Cap.

That happens, sometimes—someone on a team gets pulled into a conversation with locals and has to blend in, loses touch with their squad, misses a check-in. It’s not normally an issue. But people kept reporting it, until all four other people on the squad said they’d missed him for a period of more than an hour, their time. I started to get worried, because . . . . Well. It was supposed to be a quiet day, but we’d still sent them back in time to a war zone. I was still fielding other teams’ issues, too, though, and Googling period slang for someone to find out whether they’d been propositioned or not kind of took precedence for a while. Then I heard an “ahem” and Nick Fury was standing in front of my desk. Just standing. Staring. Looking not very happy.

I might be a desk agent, but I am a SHIELD agent. I did not squeak or crap my pants. I asked if I could help him. He asked how long Cap had been missing now, local time. I checked. There had been updates. It was something like three hours, and he’d spent most of that talking with some private who’d apparently mistaken him for his wife’s cousin or something.

Didn’t seem that bad to me, but Fury grabbed my laptop (hey!), asked a few more questions that I didn’t see the answers to, and authorized the team there to “haul his ass back, bodily if need be.” Then he asked what godforsaken idiot authorized Cap going back to this place and time.

I took that a little bit personally. I had, but it wasn’t like it was going to make any difference! It wasn’t like he’d even been born yet!

“Yeah,” Barnes said from behind me (scary ninja assassin! Gah!). He wasn’t looking at me or Fury, though. He was looking at the gate. “That’s kind of the point.”

Before I could ask what the hell, the gate flashed and Rogers and the team stumbled through it. Fury started yelling, but Cap ignored him. Just ignored him. He looked around and I realized his eyes were red. He saw Barnes and stumbled straight to him. Barnes caught and hugged him. It was like seeing people meeting up again after the Blip. Cap’s face was smashed into Barnes’ shoulder--I’m pretty sure he was crying--and Barnes kept patting his back and going “shh, shh, it’s okay.”

“No, it is not okay,” Fury barked, stomping over to them. “Exactly how much did you tell him, Rogers?”

Oh shit. One of those questions I’d missed must have been about what they were talking about, then. But why?

Rogers stepped back, looked up, and wiped his face. Yeah, he’d definitely been crying. “Enough for me,” he said, his voice thick and a little defiant. “Not enough to change the timeline. The minute we left he’d have forgotten everything.” He looked pointedly at me. “I checked.”

I hoped that my goldfish impression would tell Fury that, while I confirmed how much information leakage would be repaired without jeopardizing the timeline, I hadn’t known anything about what Rogers had had planned and still didn’t actually know whatever the hell he’d done, and please don’t kill me. I also checked my readouts. “Confirmed, no damage, sir,” I said as crisply as I could manage. “Whatever he did had no lasting effects.”

Fury stared at Rogers with his arms crossed. Rogers stared right back.

“You got lucky this time,” Fury said grimly. “Don’t try it again.”

Rogers shook his head. “I won’t. I got what I needed.”

Fury glared a bit longer, then nodded. “Good.”

“What happened?” I burst out as he turned to walk away. “This wasn’t a red flag! It was World War I, not II—he shouldn’t have known anyone there to talk to!”

“Yeah,” Cap said quietly, as Fury and Barnes gave me “you dummy” looks, which, not fair. “I never met him. That’s why I had to.”

“You got what you needed?” Barnes murmured, putting an arm around him again.

“Yeah.” Rogers leaned against him, ignoring the stares from me and his team. “I told him he’d forget. I told him about all this, about me. He—he said he was proud of me.”

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I’ve had this idea in a nebulous form for years, and it settled in to stay when Endgame gave us an actual means of time travel that Steve actually uses. I was going to finally figure out an appropriate length, decide whether or not to include anything from when Steve goes back, whose POV(s) to use, etc., but I keep getting hung up on the details, so you get a not-fully-contextualized double-drabble instead.

I still don’t have a good excuse for why everyone’s bopping around in time, nor a clear idea when this is, because it’s clearly not post-Endgame because Tony’s still alive. DETAILS.

[faejilly]

I was tagged by @la-muerta​ & @facialteeth​ & @thedivinemissema​ for the WIP/Title Game

rules: post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. send me an ask with the title that most intrigues you and interests you and i’ll post a little snippet of it or tell you something about it!

AND THEN  by @shadoedseptmbr​ @msviolacea​ & @ravenclawnerd​ for the “stories you want to write... but for some reason haven’t yet”

so this will be a mish-mash of both? The WIPs will mostly have blurbs in this case (to fit the second meme) but you are still welcome to ask follow-up questions, if you’d like ;) Assuming you make it through the list, it is uh. Not Short.

Anyone who would like to play with their WIPs, please consider yourself tagged in either or both of these. :D

Misc Fic Folder:

“untitled document” - where I’m working on fictober fills so I have word-counts for my GYWO tracker. I am not working on these because Brains Are Dumb and also Going Back To Work Is Exhausting

I made a file called “YULETIDE!” which has nothing in it but I’m determined to finish this year so that is definitely technically a thing in the Unending WIP List of Doom worth mentioning. (Tho obviously that’s all I could say even if I had started, because anonymous.)

“coda-fics, rewatch!” -yes, that exclamation mark is important! it’s to keep me motivated! (it didn’t work). Much like untitled, this is for putting stuff so I can do word count tracking even if I don’t know what I’m doing. Currently I think it just says “MARYSE” because I was working on my SH 1x6 coda-fic and then got distracted and haven’t typed anything up yet. (Yay notebooks? Boo notebooks? Not even sure at this point.)

WNIP (works not in progress) Folder:

“TOG” - I had one vivid mental image of how Nicky & Joe met (blood-stained evil smiles?) but then no idea for a follow-up story and also the fandom is insane and I’m not sure I want to deal with all of *gestures vaguely* all that

“Shan Xia Notes” -for a TTRPG that never quite got off the ground; she was a semi-tragic selkie who was still in love with the evil queen/lady who stole her skin and I got to play her for like one session and she was surprisingly chaotic neutral, which wasn’t at all what I’d been expecting. But the game never really got off the ground, so I never had enough info to really delve into writing backstory fic

“post-Kruschev” -Kruschev’s List was the last episode of Scarecrow & Mrs King, and I was debating writing an epilogue in place of the s5 we never got, to try and tie up some loose ends, but the fandom’s three old-ladies in trench coats and I never quite worked up the gumption to get it anywhere

“Code Realize warm as silk sequel” -there is literally nothing in this file except “SEX! Only a little angst” because I wanted to write some “we can’t actually touch each other” smut but never actually did. 🤷‍♀️

BioWare (also all Not-In-Progress Anymore)

“seb/adelaide”, “Theia” & “DAI Erana” -these WIP folders were cannibalized for ficlets for the last few times I did fictober, and while originally I had ideas for longer epilogues for all three of them, at this point I don’t think any of the remaining bits could support a story any longer.

”whispers in the dark” -Maia Ryder never really got much fic at all; the cancellation of any further Andromeda stuff was really disheartening, and at this point I’d have to play the game again, and I don’t think I’m gonna manage that any time soon

”TSP” -a Mass Effect 3 Shepard AU collab project that kind of went off the rails, and our mutual brains/lives never quite seem to line up so we can try and rebuild it ”Ngaio & Tane” -my one truly ruthless Shepard (Alliance background, who romanced Traynor) whose father Tane Shepard was, I think, in PsyOps, and I wanted to figure out their complicated relationship but never really did know where I was going with it

”JE Zu & Yaling” -so I’ve rambled about my Tragic Sagacious Zu Romance Thoughts regarding Jade Empire more than once (#Icy Yaling should have most of it) but apparently I want to yell about it more than I want to actually write it? Whoops.

”CI sequel: 5 times fic?” -Cruel Intentions is a kinkmeme fill that I started and then it sat for like five years before I actually finished it, and I liked the ending, but it does leave a giant fucking question mark in terms of how those people got from there to where they are after the game, and I kind of wanted to write a proper h/c fic rather than just... leaving them wallowing in all that trauma?

But I didn’t. I don’t even remember for sure how I wanted to frame the 5/1 of it all, besides it being something sad about allowing people to see you or touch you in some way. (Prayers maybe, since I think there was definitely some Sebastian & Fenris & faith stuff going on in there.)

“candles” -Merribela prompt fill that I never was happy with? Not sure what I might do with it at this point, so it’s just sitting there all sad and lonely and neglected-like.

Shadowhunters

pt1: WIP LIST ONLY

“Persuasion” -so I keep trying to write Persuasion AUs in many fandoms because it’s my favorite Austen, but I think I like it too much, I have no real solid concept of how I’d transform it, and if I don’t have anything else to say about different characters within that framework, I have no push to actually write anything? Also this SH version of it suffered from MASSIVE scope creep when I started outlining and it got too big for me to handle so I like, killed it twice? Whoops. This one is really probably never gonna happen.

“oosdt sequel” -I wanted to write more about the Forest That Eats People and Magnus & Alec as Guardians Between Worlds, and also some background Magnus’ Found Family & Lightwood Family Feels (maybe some clizzy?) and I left a Madzie plot-thread dangling from the first one on purpose even but I think this one had too many ideas and not enough focus so it’s sort of sprawling all over a doc with a lot of “???” in it

“procedural-ish” -this was originally going to be a sex-farce. and then it turned more serious. and then maybe kind of copaganda which was uncomfortable in terms of the Everything That Is The News in 2020, and then maybe it was more a Mafia AU and at that point I had self-inflicted tone whiplash and I wished the voices in my head were a little more forthcoming about their plans so I stopped before I brained myself on my computer monitor in frustration.

“I had rather a rose than live forever” -I started a reverse!verse Malec (Shadowhunter!Magnus, High Warlock!Alec) for bingo last year, and I couldn’t quite get it together in time, so I made a moodboard inspired by the bits I’d started instead. I may see if one of my prompts from Bingo this year help me finish it?

“fall fright fest (practical magic  au)” -exactly what it says on the tin! almost exactly a year old & neglected! IDEK ANYMORE (I talked about this one with the WIP meme last time tho: here)

“priest!kink theology?” -I thought it was gonna be smut? I like priest!kink. I have made other people like it and yell at me even! But then I kept diverging into demon!Magnus thinking about Priest!Alec’s faith and as usual, IDEK ANYMORE *laughs*

(If they’re remotely canon-adjacent or divergent, a bunch of these are in here because I need to rewatch the show to get the pacing/timing/tone right and I haven’t, and I don’t know why, because I enjoy the show, but BRAINS! Are Dumb! So I guess that’s it?)

“I do” -I have tried to write this damnable Malec arranged marriage fic like six different times. I have signed up for fic exchanges and bangs with it, I have rewritten massive sections, trying to change tone or structure or POV or whatever, and it basically comes down to they like each other too fast and I keep not gutting it enough to get back to a useful pace, but by the time I realized that I was on take six and kind of sick of it. I may get back to it eventually

“wing!fic” -canon divergent in early s1, trying to deal with the consequences of Simon’s kidnapping as the Truly Serious Event that it should have been. It uh. Got heavier than I expected with those consequences (considering it was originally just supposed to be Alec’s wings flirting with Magnus) and also see above re: rewatching for pacing.

“2x20 aftermath/date night/pandemonium porn“ -yes that is the actual wip title. It used to be “spite fic” because I was originally inspired by fighting against a lot of fic!Alec characterization that was clearly based more on the books and ATG syndrome than the Alec in the show, which is the Alec I know and like and want to read about. BUT, pacing and etc. again, I think. Also I have somehow entirely lost my knack for writing porn, which makes it difficult to finish something originally intended to be smut!fic. Or even teasing almost!smut.

“rubbish heap” -so this is about three different fics that I realized complemented each other really well so they’re now all in the same file as I try to turn them into the sequel of “with an if in its soul”. It includes amnesia, parabatai lore shenanigans, a s3 rewrite, and some truly awful Owl adjustments that make me wince in horrified authorly delight and pain. BUT, as with the other ones in this file, the scope is large and I normally write short-fic and I kind of just threw up my hands in exasperation. I may have to break it back up into the three different fics instead, if I ever actually want to write it. Them? But also I need to take better notes on s3 to make sure I have what I need in here.

SH Pt 2: Started posting or not yet in hiatus because it’s actually almost ready to be a thing in the real world! maybe!?

“kisses (firsts)” -I actually started publishing this one, a “series of firsts” that was supposed to be kind of relationship milestones and kind of an excuse for smut, and then there wasn’t that much smut and I lost momentum and also dear lords & ladies the timeline is stupid, wtf. I may not ever add to this one, tbqh. It doesn’t stop in a terrible place, and they’re all ficlets so they stand alone all right.

“clizzy epilogue” -this is blank atm, it’s more a reminder for me to keep poking away at my “girls who can’t breathe air, only fire” collection BECAUSE I WOULD LIKE TO ACTUALLY GET TO THE CLIZZY AT SOME POINT

"mer!alec" -pts 2-4 of a series, but apparently having an actual plan gets in the way of me *writing* the thing, and I haven't managed to throw the half an outline far enough away from my brain to be able to write again. Or something like that.

"ibhww" -if broken hearts were whole is a soulmate fic I started a million years ago, and purposefully set aside to finish some other WIPs because I thought they'd be quick, and now it's just buried under two and a half years of regret and shame so it's hard to get back to it

"iafy" -i am for you is a delightful & frothy semi-epistolary fluff piece that also just lost momentum because Life & 2020 & etc. It's far and away the most popular thing I've ever posted on AO3, which also makes me feel weird sometimes, and I feel like the fact that there's no grand conclusion planned, just a bit more fluff and settling in, might end up being disappointing? Basically, it's the first time I think I've psyched myself out about reader expectations, and until I get over that I'm going to have trouble finishing the last couple chapters. (There really are probably only two more chapters though. IT’S SO CLOSE, I wish I could just... write it. And yet?)

“fake-hating” -I do not like fake dating as a trope that much, I just do not get it, but I love outside POVs and arranged marriages and there’s this delighful tumblr post about how they wished there was more fic about people who were together but had to pretend they werent’, and uh. This may be that? Eventually? I’m not exhausted by my failure to finish it yet, so it’s still in the regular folder rather than the hiatus folder, even though nothing’s been posted for it.

AND I THINK THAT’S IT?

Not as terrible as it could be, but still. MANY WORDS THAT MAY NEVER SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY. Posting the equivalent of one’s old ratty sketchbook is always a weird feeling. :D