#lmk if you know the words origin..... pulled from a source that also used them uncreditted

[canyonroads]

"Me and my Mother (earth)" - Avery Ro

Mixed media collage. Words by ???

[squishmallow36]

Aurora Irae

I figured I've accidentally written them into enough other oneshots I should give Marelliana their own story. I originally planned on using OCs for this but well Arsonist!Marella was too fun to turn down.

Word count: 3.5k

TW: swearing, blood, a knife, arson, implied murder due to aforementioned arson, mention of Alden's homophobia, the whole shebang. Please tell me if I should tag anything else.

Neopronoun notes: She/they/fi Marella, ae/aer Biana, xe/xem Dex, it/its Keefe, ze/hir Maruca, fae/faer Linh, he/hine Fitz

Taglist (lmk if you want to be added/removed!): @stellar-lune @ichor-on-my-hands @kamikothe1and0lny @nyxpixels @snowflakewolves @poppinspop @crystallinewalker @uni-seahorse-572 @tiergan-andrin-alenefar @books-over-boys @florida-llama-46 @when-wax-wings-melt @k00laidcrush @bowlcut-boyfriends @good-old-fashioned-lover-boy7 @dexter-dizznee @jamesdeangf

On Ao3 or below the cut!

Marella stumbles back into fire hideout, clutching fire shoulder. Fi replays the night’s events over and over in fire mind, trying to figure out how it could’ve gone better.

It started pretty normally, just having to deal with your average corrupt politician who got away with tax evasion. There might be some other charges, but it’s fairly routine by now.

It shouldn’t be, but it is.

But then he started packing his car sooner than expected, which is a sure sign that he’s gonna be going somewhere sometime soon. And chances are, it’ll be out of the country.

It’s not that hard to get to Mexico from San Diego, you know? Certainly easier than from, like, New York.

And then there’s the whole problem of getting innocent--at least to a certain extent--people out of the way.

But, thankfully, Emery’s wife is having an affair. Marella doesn’t have a clue who, and it really doesn’t concern fire. Fi also doesn’t have definitive proof, but it’s obvious when you’ve been borderline-stalking their house for over a week by now and she hasn’t come home before 10 p.m. once.

Yeah, some people work, but that’s kind of excessive. And this isn’t fi’s first rodeo. You learn to spot the signs.

Marella sits down on a stool, peeling fire jacket off, and grimacing the entire time.

Small shards of glass are sticking out of fire shoulder, blood dripping from the wounds.

Marella swears. Fi grabs a pair of tweezers and braces fireself before starting to pull them out one by one.

There was so much traffic this evening and for no good reason. That threw off all the calculations, and fi already had only a vague grasp of stoichi--whatever the word is. Some fancy chemistry thing.

Honestly, it was a good day if fi didn’t fall asleep in Mrs. Galvin’s class.

Marella didn’t think fi would have to time how long, in seconds, it would take for 1 molar HCl to eat through three sheets of aluminum foil so it can react with the baking soda and heat up the carbon disulfide until it starts to burn.

But here we are.

Because it took way too freaking long to get there, it was dangerously close to when Emery’s wife usually got home, and in fire hurry, fi couldn’t get out of the blast radius in time.

Exploding windows are my favorite kind, fi thinks bitterly as fi pulls the last shard out of fire arm.

As Marella is trying to get the crusty dried blood that isn’t covering a hole off, fi starts muttering about how Dex caused all of this.

Xe’s the best source for chemicals anywhere around here, and is oblivious enough to buy fire crappy excuses of why fi needs more HCl.

That or xe knows and just lets fire believe that fi is believable. Either way, this current system is working, and fi doubts that xe is going to do anything to change that. Fi’s a well-paying customer, after all.

Marella us so caught up in fire internal monologue, fi lets fire guard down. And that’s never a good idea.

The floorboards above fire head creak with a footstep, and a stream of muttered curses start flowing from fire lips.

Fi throws on fire disguise in record time, carefully shrugging fire well-worn, fireproof jacket on before looping fire smoke-filtering mask Dex didn’t know xe made for fi.

It’ll have to do fi thinks, looking at the recent lacerations all over fire jacket, as fi creeps up the stairs.

Fi pulls a familiar knife out of fire pocket, tightly gripping its handle that has molded to the shape of fire hand after all this time.

Marella watches, crouching in the shadows. With each passing the second, the voice in the back of fire head wondering if fi is just being paranoid gets louder.

Fi’s about to give up when, softly, another floorboard creaks.

Marella wants to swear. Someone is definitely here…What are you doing?

Fi sneaks out of fire hiding spot, pressing fireself into a dark corner, hoping fi isn’t too obvious. It can be difficult to hide in an old, abandoned, concrete warehouse.

Ironically, that’s exactly why fi liked it in the first place. That, and the nice basement.

Marella gets fire first look at the figure, as they step into the light.

The figure seems to have a sixth sense to know fi is there, and as they make eye contact, their fight-or-flight responses both kick in.

The figure tries to turn and run, and there’s some primitive instinct that tells Marella to chase after them, to protect fire land.

It’s only a few steps before fi catches up, pressing them against the wall to prevent further attempts to run away.

As an added precaution, fi presses fire knife against their throat.

The figure’s hoodie falls back, revealing a terrified expression on a familiar face.

It takes much too long for Marella’s mind to put the pieces together. And those pieces all add up to fire girlfriend, Biana.

Fuck. Ae can’t figure out that I am who I am. That isn’t a conversation that’ll end well. That’s the kind of conversation that’ll put aer in more danger than ae already gets aerself into on a regular basis.

“So…um…hi?” ae whispers.

With the amount of adrenaline running through Marella’s body, it’s nothing short of a miracle that fi remembers to turn on fire voice scrambler. Because Biana recognizing fire voice would be real freaking bad.

“...hi?”

“How are you doing today?” Biana asks shakily.

“...It’s been kind of a shitty day, not gonna lie. How’s your day been?”

Biana shrugs slightly. “So-so.”

An awkward silence stretches between the two of them until Biana smiles slightly and says, “I’m Biana. Nice to meet you. I’d reach for a handshake…but…you know…”

“You can call me Aurora Irae. But you probably already knew that, judging from the whole outfit,” Marella says, using fire alter ego’s name.

“Also the knife,” Biana smirks. “So, yeah, I suspected. Although the news has been calling you Aurora Ignis.”

“I know. I’ve tried to fix it. Several times. The news has decided that a serial arsonist such as myself should have the Latin word for fire in their name. But I think I know my own name. Since I was the one that picked it. So it’s irae. I-r-a-e.”

“Pronoun pun. I love.”

Marella smiles behind the mask, glad it conceals fire true expression. Fi makes a conscious decision to ask, “What?”

“Nevermind.” Biana pauses before switching to an entirely different track. “Is it related to the dies irae leitmotif at all?”

The dies irae, where the ‘dies’ part is two syllables because Latin, is a super famous bit of music--just four notes, which are a minor second, and then a minor third. With that kind of minor key influence, even without translating the entire poem, you can kind of tell that it isn’t the happiest leitmotif you’re ever going to find.

It often is used to represent death, and it’s in everything from Star Wars, to The Lion King, to the sound Elsa is hearing in like the entire, like, first half of Frozen 2 to an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Marella half-listened to.

If you want to know what it sounds like, “Making Christmas” from The Nightmare Before Christmas, is heavily drawn from the dies irae. As in the part where they say “Making Christmas” is the dies irae.

So if you ever hear some bit of music that sounds like “Making Christmas,” it could very well be an intentional use of the dies irae, and you should be looking for the death it’s foreshadowing.

If that doesn’t make it clear enough, the answer is yes. “Finally. Someone has culture. Have you played an instrument by any chance?” Marella asks, knowing full well that ae has.

“Yeah, viola for--wait, how many years? Since 4th grade. Seven-ish years. Close enough. You?”

“Like, maybe a year of clarinet. And then YouTube music theory channels that I can barely understand.” fi answers, with three years of clarinet under fire belt.

“You seem like a clarinet.”

“What?”

“I don’t know, just a vibe. You seem like you’d play clarinet.”

How the hell do you get that, Bi?

Marella pulls the knife just a hair back, away from Biana’s throat, enough to keep up appearances, but now that fi’s stopped shaking, fi doesn’t want to accidentally slit aer throat.

“Trust me, after dealing with instrument people, you start to give off a vibe. Why else would all the trumpets be arrogant arseholes?”

“Sounds fake, but okay.”

Biana laughs, and Marella’s stomach fills with familiar butterflies. “You’re not wrong. It’s like an instrumental gaydar. Wonder if it’s connected to my actual one.”

“Biana, a word of advice. Don’t tell the person with the knife know that you’re queer. What would you have done if I was homophobic?”

“Considering I don’t have a new hole in my neck, I’m pretty sure I’m okay.”

“Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

“Aw, are you worried about me?”

“Now I am!” Marella says, barely holding fireself back from revealing fire identity, because this is not okay. Fi also puts down the knife.

“Well, don’t. No reason to worry.”

There are a few obvious tells that Bi is thinking about Alden, and that is one of the most common one.

I’m so glad this mask hides any expression I might have. Because I’m ready to beat Alden’s ass and Bi doesn’t need to know that.

“Then why don’t I believe you?”

“Probably because you have to be paranoid enough to hold me at knifepoint.”

“Why did you sneak in here anyway?”

“My friends disproportionately enjoy daring me to break into places. It’s a gift and a curse. Been a while since I got caught. I honestly didn’t know you were here. Just thought it was your average abandoned warehouse.”

“Well, that’s why I picked it so that’s nice…I guess.”

Biana laughs. “You sound like my girlfriend.”

Oh, great. Forgot to disguise speech patterns. How am I supposed to remember that?

“We talked about this. I still have a knife. Don’t give me any personal details, if you can possibly help it. Because you don’t want questionably trustworthy people to be able to track you and the people you care about down.”

“I can protect myself, thanks.”

“Oh, Biana, how I wish I could believe that.”

“I’m tougher than I look.”

“You go on believing that,” Marella mutters.

“Hey, at least I don’t haven’t sent Alden Vacker a three page rant he because made some homophobic tweets…as much as I want to.”

“The news found out about that? Stars.”

“I really don’t know how they found out…it may or may not have been leaked by his daughtaer.” Biana smirks. “And they’ve decided you’re straightn’t, which just means they’re calling you gay until further notice. Because they don’t know any other terms.”

“Of course they did. But they were kind of right for once. I’m gay as hell. And I would appreciate it if you didn’t include that in your police report. I don’t need to piss off the homophobes more than I already do.”

“But pissing off the homophobes is fun…Also who said anything about a police report?"

“I’m pretty sure holding someone at knifepoint is some felony or another. And then there’s the whole arson thing but that’s whatever.”

“Um, so does breaking and entering, if I’m not mistaken. Or trespassing or whatever I’m doing here.”

“Okay, that’s fair,” Marella says, closing the pocket knife. If Bi wanted to run away, ae would have already.

“Thanks,” ae says sarcastically.

“You’re welcome,” fi replies, just as sarcastically.

“So does that mean I can…” Bi gestures towards the door.

“As long as you don’t tell anyone where I am. If you do, I will find you and slit your throat. And don’t try to find a legal loophole out of it like a politician.”

“Except for when it accidentally legalizes arson for people who don’t exclusively use binary pronouns.”

Marella stops. “Wait, what?”

“Yeah, in the US’s arson laws, it explicitly uses ‘he or she’ blah blah blah I don’t really care about the rest.”

“Is that why the news is so determined to use he/him for me? Because I have done my absolute best to present as nonbinary and yet here we are.”

“May I ask what you’d like pronoun-wise for my mental dictionary then?”

“I guess they/them works. Gender is yucky.”

Biana laughs, making fi’s heart flutter. They’ve been dating for months now and it still won’t stop with that.

“That’s the most correct thing I’ve heard all week. And maybe try looking into neopronouns if the trinary doesn’t feel like it fits.”

Marella nods, saying, “I will,” knowing full well that fi’d love to use fi/fire pronouns but that just doesn’t seem feasible. Aurora Irae can’t know about neopronouns before today, because that’s much too small of a community, so it’d be too easy to find fire from there, and Marella can’t just use fi/fire while there’s a serial arsonist running around.

“Alright. Then I guess I’ll see you never.”

“Bye. Remember, you better not tell anyone about this place.”

Biana turns to leave before whipping back around again. “Wait, one more thing. You remember Alden, right?”

“Unfortunately.”

“When he gets caught and then inevitably pardoned for tax evasion or something, put him on your list.”

Oh, great, Biana is trying to make an arsonist murder aer father. I knew their relationship was bad but holy fuck.

“Okay.”

“He’s a horrible, queerphobic bast--wait, you agreed?”

“Yeah, sure, why not? Small price to pay for security. Plus, he fits my business model.”

Biana smiles amusedly. “Business model?”

“Business model, modus operandi, same thing.”

Biana snorts. “I don’t think I’ve got anything else, so bye!” Ae walks backward, waving, and Marella spends the entire time worrying that ae’s gonna trip on something and hurt aerself, but ae somehow avoids all of the rubble that Marella likes to think of as interior decor.

It’s what makes aer so good at being in places ae shouldn’t be.

Fi waves halfheartedly, making sure Biana gets off fire property before sighing and climbing back downstairs.

As the adrenaline fades, the nerves in fire shoulder that fi’d been ignoring throw a fit, and peeling fire jacket off is more painful than earlier, with even more semi-dried blood fusing fire to fire jacket.

Fi finishes patching fireself up as best as fi can before beginning to pack up fire meager belongings that get left here unattended.

Yes, Marella trusts Biana, but that doesn’t mean Aurora Irae can.

And if ae doesn’t hold up aer end of the bargain, there’s no telling how severe the fallout will be.

It’s morning before fi knows it. Marella sighs as fi watches the sunrise, already mapping a mental route to the nearest coffeeshop.

It’s a jumble of emotions as Marella throws fire signature accelerant, designed to burn bright yellow with just a dusting of sodium--fi didn’t get to use it last night because of outside factors--and it wipes away any trace that fi’d ever been here.

There’s plenty of other abandoned buildings out there, fi tells fireself as fi watches the flames consume fire warehouse.

Marella is almost in a trance until reality comes back to slap fire in the face, and fi takes off running towards fire high school, with not nearly enough time to be on time to fire first class.

Don’t you people know that I have to go real estate shopping later today? I don’t have time for this much homework, Marella thinks bitterly, joining her friends in the hallway, who have already started joking about nothing, per usual.

But, it’s nice to have this normal high school experience sometimes, especially after last night.

“Bi, do you think you can maybe help me?” Keefe asks, causing Biana to sigh heavily.

“What’s your idea this time?"

It shrugs. “Just a little something for Principal Alina. I need you to break into her office for me.”

Biana, just like everyone else here, knows that this isn’t the whole story, but has given up fighting a long time ago. “Text me the details. I don’t have enough energy to argue.”

“You sleep alright?” Marella asks.

Ae yawns, and Marella notices the dark circles under aer eyes. “Yeah. I just had more homework than I thought.”

Liar. You didn’t have any homework. You told me yourself. I should be proud that you’re willing to lie for Aurora Irae.

Did you lose sleep thinking about them? As your girlfriend, that’s disappointing but understandable.

Maruca blows hir nose for the several hundredth time today. “I’ve probably just infected aer. You might be next.” Hir parents are convinced it’s just allergies. But we've collectively decided it’s one heck of a head cold. Antihistamines aren’t helping.

“Is that a threat?” Stina asks, smirking.

“Do you want it to be?” Ze looks at her, raising an eyebrow.

The others just collectively ignore the fact that they’ve been queerplatonically flirting for months now and yet, somehow, they’re still ignorant of what’s going on between them. So everybody willfully ignores it.

It’s not like you can tell either of them what they’re too oblivious to see.

Linh saves everyone, asking, “Wait, Bi, didn’t we send you off on a mission last night?”

Before ae can respond, Fitz joins the group, interrupting, “Yes, you did. And that warehouse was targeted by Aurora Ignis this morning. You should be lucky you weren’t in there. It’s all over the local news.”

“Damn,” Keefe mutters, not-so-discreetly watching its best friend’s ass as he walks away. It’s anyone’s guess where its statement applies.

“Anything interesting happen while you were there?” Marella asks, choosing to ignore Keefe. If you can’t tell, there’s kind of a trend here.

Biana swallows hard, and Marella sees a fine line on aer throat from last night’s events.

Worse case scenario, it’ll blend right into the car crash scars covering aer entire left side from a few years ago.

“Nope,” ae answers, voice shaking only slightly. If anyone notices it, they don’t point it out.

“Aw, that’s disappointing.” Keefe says. “Fitzy could use a prompt for hine creative writing class.”

Linh looks at it. “We’re in the middle of our poetry unit.”

“Hey, I don’t know how that works. Eddie Poe could probably figure it out.”

Fae shudders. “That’s because Poe is a motherfucking genius.”

“What would Bangs Boy think about your language, young laedy?"

“Tam is your boyfriend and swears like a sailor. Don’t even try that with me.”

“Uh, we’re on a break right now, and the fact that you don’t know that…my disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined.”

“I’m already a disappointment to my parents, do you think I care?”

Fae had to go there, didn’t fae?

“And so is everyone here. That doesn’t make you special,” Keefe argues.

Stina interjects, “No, I’m not.”

“Shut up,” Keefe growls, not as angry at it wants to seem like it is.

“Have fun with that. See ya later, bitches,” Stina says, turning away to her next class.

Keefe gets dropped off for its math class that it’s going to inevitably skip one way or another, and then Maruca and Linh get dropped off at their required US history class.

Nobody except for Fitzy wants to take that. And even that’s debatable some days, so you know it’s bad.

All that’s left is Marella and Biana, holding hands as they walk down to the science halls.

“You’re sure nothing happened yesterday, love?” Marella asks.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m fine. No reason to worry.”

That just makes me worry more, you know that, right?

“Wow. So convincing.” Marella replies, piling the sarcasm on thick.

“I don’t want to talk about it, okay?”

Marella squeezes aer hand. “I’m always here if you need me. Maybe not in the physical plane and I might miraculously be away from my phone for a millisecond, but, you know, metaphorically.”

Biana just barely smiles, complex emotions that words can’t quite describe etched into every line.

“I’ll see you after class? ‘Cause you can’t get rid of me this easily.”

Marella’s hand slips from Biana’s grasp as she heads into her AP Chem class she regrets taking every single day.

Stars, I’m a horrible person. Ae feels like shit. Because of me and me alone.

But you had to make sure Aurora Irae’s secret was safe.

I guess. But there really isn’t much left to tell anymore.

You don’t know what could end up being your downfall. Your secrets will be safe as long as nobody knows anything.

That’s a really damn lonely way to live. But it’s not like I’ve got any better solutions.

[neveralarch]

ohhhh please do allez. star emoji

Allez is the fic that nearly fucking killed me, it was soooo frustrating. But successful in the end I think! Thank you for asking about it, apparently I desperately wanted to spill out the process behind writing it. Very long response under the cut, including a NSFW/adult excerpt from a previous version of the fic. If you have any questions about specific lines in the fic definitely lmk, bc I basically just yelled about writing here and very little about the actual plot or anything haha.

It's very weird for me to have a long fic or a series that I actually WANT to continue - usually I write a thing and then I'm done with it (and sometimes just done with the fandom altogether), which I know can be kind of frustrating to the readers who were hoping for more. But fencing fic is just like this WELL, I have all of this stuff from it I want to splash out on the pavement for people to look at, and it's been super fun to just invite those questions and prompts that people have and see if I can get anything out of the well for those.

Neery left a comment on Passe (the last main fic) that said in part "If you're taking prompts for this universe, I'd love to see more of Wheeljack's and Starscream's relationship, especially their first time (because you can't tell me Starscream wasn't a neurotic mess about it)." And I went YEAH and then hopped into chat with Dez ( @sauntervaguelydown ) and basically just banged out the whole plot while a) tipsy after a party and then b) the next morning in between refereeing at a fencing tournament. Which was probably a good set of states to be thinking about this fic.

At first I was thinking of this as a short five times fic, basically showing a set of sex failures followed by sex success, because I love bad sex becoming good sex in fic. But the more I thought about it the more serious it got, because it was so tangled up in my head with this idea of what 'good' sex actually is and who gets to decide if you're having good sex. This is a little TMI but I also became sexually active in the last couple years and I've been spending a lot of time trying to figure out what the difference between fantasy and physical desire is as a person who used to be and maybe still is on the ace spectrum somewhere. And (again) what the distinction is between 'good sex' and 'sex I want to have.' So the more I worked on this the more all of that started spilling onto the page.

I also felt a little uncertain about where I left Starscream and Wheeljack in the main fics. I think they can and will be happy, but the undercurrent in the series is that Starscream is still really hung up on Megatron while also recognizing how much Megatron fucked him over, while Wheeljack is furious at Megatron both for what he did to Starscream and for what he perceives Megatron to have done to fencing in general. Starscream's half of that undercurrent gets resolved in the main series, but Wheeljack's half doesn't and it felt like I needed to tackle that in Allez.

I figured this would be an easy fic to write even though I wanted it to be more serious because I knew exactly what the goals were and exactly what the plot was. And then I started writing it and walked straight into a wall. I wrote 2600 words from Starscream's pov, which was FUN but meant that Wheeljack was just... there. Hanging around and being a Good Boyfriend while Starscream panicked.

Starscream flashed a grin, trying to look like a confident mech-about-town who you could trust with your connectors. He could do this. It would be slow and soft and nice, everything you were supposed to do with your sweetspark. And it would feel amazing, because he liked Wheeljack and he wanted to be with him.

"Starscream?" Wheeljack was leaning back a little. "What's that look about?"

"Nothing." Starscream snapped his panel back, transforming his array so the plug was uppermost. "Just thinking about how much I want you."

Wheeljack's optics softened, and his panel opened. His own array transformed into the compatible configuration, plug below his socket. Frag, this was going to be good. Starscream wanted to shove Wheeljack down and slam their arrays together, or for Wheeljack to shove Starscream on his back and ride Starscream's plug until Starscream was begging for the reciprocal connection, desperate for charge.

But Starscream didn't do any of those things, because he was trying to do this right. Instead he leaned back and spread his legs, pulling Wheeljack in by his shoulder to rest between them. Wheeljack's optics were glistening as he eased forward, and they both gasped as their arrays met. The tips of their prongs breached their sockets, and that first tingle of charge was everything Starscream had wanted.

Wheeljack was careful, so careful as he pressed forward, micrometer by micrometer. The charge was a teasing tingle crawling from Starscream's array to the tips of his wings. Wheeljack leaned forward and kissed Starscream as they slipped a little closer together, and it was all perfectly dull.

No. Perfect, it was perfect. The charge wasn't supposed to come in rolling waves that nearly knocked you offline, and your partner wasn't supposed to wrestle you down to the berth while you tried to throw them off. This was the way good mechs fragged. Good mechs like Wheeljack, and like the mech Starscream was pretending to be.

"Starscream," murmured Wheeljack.

Starscream squeezed his optics shut and arched his back a little, forcing the connection deeper before he remembered that he was trying to let Wheeljack control the pace. Wheeljack's frame was hovering over Starscream's, not covering him. He was still modulating his charge to match the chaste little trickle Starscream was allowing through. His mask was still pressed against Starscream's lips. It was straight out of a romance holo.

It wasn't supposed to be boring.

"Starscream," said Wheeljack again. "Starscream, are you okay? I'm gonna disconnect."

"No!" Starscream tightened his grip on Wheeljack's shoulder.

"You're obviously not having a good time." Wheeljack pulled back, able to resist Starscream with his better leverage. "We don't have to connect, it's fine."

"It's not fine!" Starscream tried to tighten his socket to keep Wheeljack there, but Wheeljack's prongs were too thin and smooth for Starscream to catch. "I want to connect, I want to be with you."

"You are with me." Wheeljack laid a hand against Starscream's cheek and pulled their arrays apart. "You don't have to-"

"I hate you," hissed Starscream. "Why can't you just do it? Why can't you just show some bearings and let me worry about myself?"

You see? Fun to write but Wheeljack is just this thing for Starscream to react against.

I chatted with Dez about the problem and decided to rewrite the fic in Wheeljack pov so the exact source of Starscream's neuroticism would be more of a reveal and so I could get further into Wheeljack's head. I got a few hundred words into the new version and just COULD NOT do it, Wheeljack's voice felt all wrong, like I was writing Starscream again but putting Wheeljack's name on it. I talked to Dez about it AGAIN and finally hit on the idea of Wheeljack trying to feel his way through a relationship on trial and error (because Starscream is incapable of communicating) and the amazingly romantic gesture of flowcharts. After that I mostly had it. Until I hit the ending and slammed into ANOTHER wall and had to go back to Dez and be like. Please. Read this. Tell me how to be free.

Dez suggested Starscream and Wheeljack actually having A Conversation after they manage to have sex - basically that they had earned some emotional honesty after all that. This REALLY helped, and I managed to get it the rest of the way to the ending from here, although it took two more rewrites and a whole other ending scene. Total time from conception to post: about 6 weeks, which isn't that much except I felt like I was banging my head against it the entire time haha. And it took about five rewrites, which is two more than I usually do.

Thank god for Dez. I'm usually a pretty isolated writer? I ask for betas on big fics, but that's typically when I have a polished version or when 'm running up against a deadline. It's been really amazing to have someone to bounce fic ideas off of and to pass drafts back and forth with and just to complain when the struggle is getting especially real. I think I would've gotten really sick of this fic without Dez's help and enthusiasm. It probably wouldn't have gotten done at all. As it is, I'm really happy with how it all turned out :)

Some other little bits:

Allez means 'let's go' or 'go' and is also how you start each touch in a fencing bout if you're refereeing in the internation standard (ie French). English: on guard, ready, fence. French: en garde, pret, allez. It's also what French speakers will sometimes yell at a sabre fencer in between touches or while they're charging down the strip. I was thinking here that it's kind of fun to imagine Starscream and Wheeljack's friends shouting 'allez' at them, cheering them on but also hoping they'll get on with it already. Also, I kind of think of this fic as the beginning of a new set of fics - we're out of the main Megatron arc and into more slice of life stuff - so it felt appropriate as a new start to the bout.

When I originally conceived of the Attaque Composee series, I wanted it all to be T rated because I wanted it to be available to most readers and also if someone ever connects meatspace me with this series (a terrifying possibility) I don't really want the conversation to be 'hey I saw you wrote a robot fencing porn fic.' But I also REALLY wanted to write this story and I decided to just roll with it - it's easy to skip this one and read the rest of the series, and I've written plenty of other robot porn fics at this point.

Last thing: over nine fucking years ago I wrote a Scream of Shalka Doctor Who fic where the Master climbed over a table to yell at the Doctor, and my beta completely correctly pointed out that Shalka!Master isn't physically dramatic like that. I have a tendency toward overblown physical comedy and drama that I've had to rein in for years and it is SO RELAXING to be in a fandom where I can write Starscream standing on the berth, nearly falling over while shrieking at Wheeljack and everyone's reaction is 'yep. Yeah. He likes to be tall.'

Thank you for asking about this!!

[avengerleague]

‘Mimic’

Avengers x Female Reader

Chapter 1: Origin

Summary: The origin story for Y/n, a soon to be avenger. When a fight involving the avengers was the last thing you were expected to encounter on your walk back to your apartment one day. After trying to be a good Samaritan puts you in the wrong place at the wrong time, a strange device’s explosion cause results that you couldn’t have seen coming.

Word Count: 2690

a/n: Alright so in case you’re wondering the protagonist is going to have power mimicry. I didn’t want to be that bitch who spoils her own story but this is called ‘Mimic’ so I don’t think it would have been that hard to figure out anyway. I’ll further explain in the next chapter. Also, like I said in my last post, in my head this was going to end up being like Reader x Bucky but in a future scene I wrote out earlier it came together as a really cute Reader x Steve??? So if anyone has any opinions on this lmk like should I pick one, or try to do a love triangle type thing? w/e enjoy! Or don’t I can’t force you to feel anything!

Chapter 2   Chapter 3

New York City was no stranger to Avenger intervention. It was only a few short years ago that the they first assembled to save the world, in effect trashing the city as a whole. And while many New Yorkers still held a grudge about the widespread destruction that resulted, when chaos struck, there was no one else anyone would rather have around.

 You were only a few minutes from your apartment when you heard people start screaming at the end of the block. You stopped in your tracks and pulled your earbuds out of your ear as a wave of people rushed towards you and away from something; it was practically a stampede. The fight or flight in you told you to follow the crowd and run screaming in the opposite direction, but there was a curious part of you that wanted to see what was happening for yourself. You stuffed your phone and headphones in your pocket and began to push through the crowd. Swimming upstream was hard enough without being shoved and elbowed, but soon enough you broke through the end of the mob to see the rest of the street was almost completely open. Almost. About 100 feet from you 7 guys in all black facing away from you were fighting 3 people whose faces you couldn’t see, two guys and a girl. Like intense fighting. You could see that one of the guys in black had something in his back pack that was glowing through the fabric. You made out that one of the three was dressed strangely, like in a morphsuit, and then wait, did the girl just… and did the guy on the left just… it can’t be the --

 Before you could finish your thought, your eyes landed on something halfway between you and the people fighting. It was a little boy standing on the sidewalk crying, he must have lost his family in the chaos. He could only be about three or four and looked like he was too scared to move on his own. It’s not like you were the everyday hero type, but you couldn’t just leave the kid there.

 Sticking close to the buildings on your left, you made your way over to the boy. There were random objects and debris all over the street from the panic a few minutes earlier, so you head to weave and climb your way over. After a bit of struggle, you finally reached him and kneeled down to try to console him. His crying eased but he still gave a few quiet sobs. “Hi buddy it’s okay, it’s gonna be okay,” you lightly placed your hands on the sides of his arms. “Do you know were your mom or dad went?” The boy wiped his cheek and pointed in the direction the crowd left. Another loud yell caught your attention, except this time it was coming from the direction of the fight. Now that you were closer you had a better view. There were two guys in black knocked out on the ground, maybe dead! That wasn’t really any of your business. The source of the yelling was another one of the guys in black – he was floating a couple feet in the air. Down on the ground you saw a girl with a reddish cloud coming from her hands presumably levitating him. She looked vaguely familiar, like you might have seen her on the news. And though you weren’t sure of her name, the way she was suspending this guy in the air, you were pretty sure she was in the Avengers. Your eyes darted to the right of her; is that Captain fucking America who just knocked that other guy out? Something on the left caught your attention; a guy in a red and blue full body suit swung off a building and tied a guy up with what looked like webbing of some sort. You’d seen him before, but you had no idea he was in with the Avengers. He was spider something, the spider, Spiderman? That left only two of the bad guys to go. Captain America grabbed the glowing thing out of the guy he’d knocked out’s bag and ran a couple feet away from the fighting to examine it while the other two held off the remaining bad guys. Something flying overhead caught your eye. Hold on, was that Iron Man? This really was the Avengers.

 You shook yourself back into reality and refocused on this kid who desperately needed saving. You picked him up and tried to make your way back where you came from through the rubble. You’d only taken a few steps when you saw a woman come running towards you crying. The boy reached out towards her and called for her. You glanced back at Captain America; you were now close enough that you could hear him speaking into an earpiece while picking around at wires connected to the glowing box. “Tony, I’ve been able to shrink the blast radius and for the most part disarm the bomb, but I haven’t been able to stabilize it and I can’t get the timer to stop.” You didn’t have time to be concerned. You continued climbing through the debris and heard him talking into his earphone again from behind you, “How do we know it won’t be harmful? Even if it won’t physically blow something up we don’t know what it’s capable of”.

 You finally reached the woman at the middle of the street at a fallen piece of a building that was now blocking the entire street. It was low enough that you could pass the boy over it, but you would need a running start or a boost to get over it yourself. “Thank you so much, I don’t know how to thank you,” his mother said as you lifted the boy over the rubble into her arms. “We got separated with all the craziness and then I couldn’t get through all the people” she said through tears of relief. “I was only doing what anybody would do,” you assured once he was safely across. “Now you should get out of here. I can manage getting across myself.” The woman nodded her head and backed away. “Thank you, truly.” She turned and ran.

 You looked side to side along the piece of the barricaded street to find a place that you would be able to climb over and ran a couple feet to your left. You decided to take one final look back at Captain America and the Avengers. You looked over your shoulder and before you knew what was happening you were being dragged away from the barricade.

 The guy held you around your neck and shoulders and pressed a gun to your temple. You had your feet on the ground, but he was holding you at an angle where you couldn’t stand. You managed to look up and see it was one of the guys in black. “Drop the device.” He threatened, “Or else.” Captain America put the glowing thing down and sat back on his feet with his hands up. The only other remaining bad guy grabbed the device from in front of cap and joined the guy who was currently holding a gun to your head. The Avenger girl and the Spiderman guy ran up behind Captain America panting. It was a stand-off.

 Needless to say, this was not where you thought this day was going to end up when you woke up this morning.

 “Back away, and the girl will be fine,” the guy holding the device said.” That’s when two shots came and struck the guys in black out of the blue, like literally, out of the sky.” You fell onto your hands and knees and looked up to see the one and only Iron Man land next to the other avengers who were still about 30 feet away from you. In a semi-robotic voice from inside the suit you heard him say “We don’t negotiate with terrorists”. A majorly cool line, but you didn’t really have time to appreciate it.

 *BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP*

 You looked at the glowing device still a few feet away from you and saw it was ticking down the final seconds until detonation. The avengers must have heard it too. One of them yelled “RUN!”

 Without thinking you took off in the opposite direction of the device. You saw the Spiderman shoot his web at it and the girl use whatever powers she had to try and get it away from you, but it was too late. A second later with a boom you were blasted back and hit the broken building in the middle of the street. You were lying on the ground, but you felt pretty much okay, you didn’t feel like you’d been seriously injured or affected in any way. You pushed your hair out of your face and looked up to see the girl was rushing over to you. The blast must have knocked one of the guys into the other because they were both on the ground. While they were on the ground though, they were in about the same place that they were before, so you gathered they weren’t thrown back like you were.  You looked around, Iron Man was gone.

 “Are you okay?” she asked kneeling in front of you. She had brown hair, a whisper of an eastern European accent, and looked around your age, maybe a little younger. You shook your head and nodded at the same time, mostly just in shock at this turn of events. “Yeah I’m, I’m fine. I think I’m fine.”

 “Steve only had time to shrink the blast radius to about 15 or 20 feet, so we were just out of reach, but you felt the full force. That’s why you were thrown back so far”. She pressed her earpiece into her ear and stopped talking, seemingly to hear someone talking to her. After a moment she nodded her head and refaced you. “Tony says that he scanned your vitals and you should be fine. No broken bones, no concussion, just a sprained wrist and some bruises.”

 “Tony Stark?” Your eyes practically popped out of your head. The girl nodded “He’ll be back, he’s making sure the explosion was contained to this block”. Billionaire, dreamboat Tony Stark had done a scan on your body. How much could he see? Should I even be thinking about this right now? No, I’m sure I shouldn’t, and yet…

 She offered you her hand and pulled you off the ground. “I’m Wanda by the way,” she said.

 You started “I’m –” but got cut off when Captain America and Spiderman ran over.

 You’d obviously seen pictures and videos of Steve Rogers before, hell, you even did a presentation on him once in middle school, but none of that could have told you about how utterly, downright handsome this man was in the flesh. “Wanda, is she okay?” He asked looking from you to her. The reason he probably hadn’t asked you himself was because your eyes were so wide from seeing him up-close and personal that you looked like you were in shock. Which you kind of were, but more of an attractive-man/avengers-shock than anything else.

 “She’s alright.”

 Captain America nodded his head and Iron Man (fucking Iron Man!) landed next to you. You gasped a little bit out of surprise but the other three seemed unphased by his falling out of the sky. Cap stuck his hand out towards you to shake.

 “I’m Steve.”

 You reached towards him, “I’m –” a reddish cloud came out from your hand just before it met his and he was thrown down the street, landing on his stomach. Steve groaned and pushed himself up to his elbows.

 For a moment nobody said anything. They looked from you to Captain America and back to you. You look down at your hands. You were just as shocked as they were. No, you were certainly more shocked.

 Iron Man points to Wanda, “I thought that was your thing?”

 “It looked like it was my thing, but it wasn’t me, I swear.”

 “What are there two of them?” Spiderman muffled through his mask throwing his hands up.

 Everyone turned to look at you. Cap walked back over, his hair slightly messier. You shook your head with wide eyes, “I swear that’s never happened before”. They all stayed silent for another moment.

 “Well,” Iron Man broke the silence, “She obviously has to come back with us.”

 Cap turned to him, “Hold on Tony, we don’t know what this situation was, we don’t know who these guys are. We’re lucky we were even around in the first place. This could be out of our jurisdiction.”

 Spiderman raised his hand, “Are we even sure we have a jurisdiction?”

 “Maybe we should take her to a hospital,” he continued.

 Iron Man shook his head, (or his helmet I guess). “Cap, she’s perfectly healthy, physically. A hospital would be completely useless. Whatever that was,” he said motioning to your hands, “Came from that glowstick on steroids. When someone can throw someone 15 feet in the air without touching them, that is very much in our jurisdiction.”

 Cap nodded his head realizing Tony was probably right. “Right. Now that all of that’s settled,” Tony Stark turned to you, “Are you ready to go to the Avengers facility?” You were more than a little thrown off. The avengers facility? That was like the Batcave, the inner sanctum. Should you just leave everything and go? Did you even have a choice? You didn’t like your job that much, you didn’t like your roommate that much, so what did you have to lose? “I’m in.”

 “Great! Now you four are all going to have to be quarantined until we figure out what’s wrong with this young lady, and if it affected the rest of you, you know, with your standing here right now”.

 “Hang on, what do you mean ‘you four’, what about you?” Wanda protested.

 “You may or may not have noticed, miss teenage drama queen, but I happen to be in an airtight suit with a filtration system. Nothing gets in here but pristine air” Tony boasted.

 “What about me?” Spiderman chimed in. “You designed my suit; did you give me a filtration system?”

 “No, that thing’s mostly polyester. Anyway, since you three were out of the blast radius I don’t think it should have affected you in the same way. I mean you two can’t make things fly with your hands, can you?” he said pointing to Spiderman and Cap. “Peter?”

 Spiderman – Peter, sighed and made an intensely half-hearted effort to mimic the hand motions you had seen Wanda doing earlier during the fight. You had to admit, it made him look pretty stupid, but nothing happened. “Yeah that’s what I figured. Super glad I got to see that though”. He leaned down and picked up the device. “F.R.I.D.A.Y.  just called four self-driving cars to bring you guys back upstate, and she let the police know to block off this street just in case it ends up being toxic or something.” You looked over at the others to see if they were as troubled by that statement as you were, and with the exception of Peter (who even through a mask you could tell had eyes nearly popping out of his head), they looked more inconvenienced and annoyed at Tony than anything. “I wouldn’t give it too much thought. So, I’m gonna fly back because I can fly, and I guess I’ll meet you all there”.

 Wanda rolled her eyes, “ You know you’re not the only Avenger who can fly, Tony.”

 “I don’t know, yours is more levitating. You can’t do distance. It’s sad.”

 “Suck it Tony”

 “Wow, she’s really catching on to American slang. ‘Suck it’, that’s really something. You teaching her this Parker?”

 Steve turned to you once more, “What did you say your name was again?”

 You let out a small laugh, “I actually didn’t get to say. I’m Y/n”.

---

Chapter 2   Chapter 3

---

Tagged Blogs:

@avengerleague

@thewhinersoldierwhi

[succubused]

oh child, you have never been alone: pt. 1

xxxxx author note so scroll past if u are tired of my Shit and just want to Read

Here’s a clip from my original story that is either going to one day manifest as a game or as a novel. We haven’t decided yet but

It’s important to me that I get feedback on things like this so if you read it please tell me what you thought, what was confusing, when i used the same words too much (I’m really tired and jacked out on ativan right now so my brain isn’t 100 percent sry friends)

But this is Valkyrie whomst I’ve been talking about a lot, and also Quinn makes an appearance as well as Lace and Maven. Let me know if you want to see the next part of this, because it doesn’t just end where I stopped writing, I just got too tired to finish.

I have posted pics of all these dudes except for The Valkyrie™ (different from Valkyrie herself i know it’s a lot) and so lmk if you want a picture of Lace or of the Big Man Valk Himself because would be happy to draw

xxxxx end author note thank u for ur support

“You mean, you’re saying Valkyrie isn’t your name?”

“Yeah.”

How long had they been walking for?

It wasn’t the sort of rhetorical question you ask yourself at night, awake, how long have I been lying here when you can’t sleep. It was I don’t know when I am.

Where, then?

Snowed-over mountain’s edge. Wooden planks spiky with deformities stuck up through the ice, defiant, still trying to be a fence. The sight amused her. They were still trying. We should learn from that.

The cold was the kissing kind that leached through your cheeks and left your teeth shaking where they stood. Valkyrie pulled her hood tighter, for all the good it did, which was none. Hood, scarf, gloves, boots, so prepared. For all the good they did.

For all the good we did.

I’m sorry.

It was like a voice. Someone was speaking but it wasn't her.

“Something’s off,” she said suddenly and it occurred to her that this might have been the first time she had spoken aloud in

“Valkyrie?”

“Quinn?”

She turned but couldn’t see him, or Lace, or Maven. The snow blew from all sides, thick and falling in a heavy veil over her eyes. Blind.

“What is this? What’s wrong?”

“What is what? I can’t see you!”

Edge of fear in Quinn’s voice that’s not good for him that’s not good for anything I know what this is I know what this is—

“We’re dreaming, aren’t we?” Maven this time. Not afraid. Exasperated. Never afraid. Did he even know how?

“I would know…”

They were still climbing. Had she decided to do that?

“…wouldn’t I?”

A soft thud and a yelp of surprise.

“Not a dream,” Lace called. “Maven’s still here.”

“You pushed me!”

“You’re surprised?”

“Don’t high priestesses take a vow of nonviolence or something?”

A dark laugh. Lace was all right. “Technically it just forbids you from using violence against the faithful. When was the last time you went to absolution?”

“Last week!” he snapped, indignant.

Strange. Valkyrie hadn’t known he cared much for the church. But for them it was absolution or Leaching and Leaching wasn’t really everyone’s thing. Besides, she’d seen his arms. Unscarred.

“Look at that,” murmured Quinn. Hand over eyes, he turned to look at the valley, clear and gray all over, illuminated by a rose gold sunrise. Flat for a long time. In the distance, maybe, trees with white leaves.

Valkyrie crept next to him, cautiously. He glanced at her. “The trees are like us,” he said.

“Realistically impossible to approach and potentially a hallucination?”

Quinn laughed. “No, Val, they’ve got white hair.”

She started to smile. She froze instead.

ice in your chest that is how you describe it is it not

“Wait. Something’s off.”

when it comes and it always does come the air turns sharp for you thunderhead shaker of the earth she has no choice but to shudder when confronted with the burning ice of your fear

She blinked and looked around, trying to break the debilitating feeling that she was wasting time she wouldn’t get a second chance to use correctly.

ice that pounds in every single one of your veins it will crystallize all through your blood and instead of killing you it will turn you into

“The stairs weren’t there before,” she said quickly, “and it was snowing before, it was really fucking cold? Right?”

it will turn you into me, and you little horror have no hope at all of accomplishing anything against your enemy if you have not become me. Valkyrie.

Valkyrie stood still. “I would tell you all to run but I don’t know where to send you.”

“You could say precisely zero things that would convince me to leave you here, Valkyrie, but it’s a sweet thought.” Maven braced his feet against the top stair, drawing the sword that always baffled Valkyrie as it was nearly as tall as he was (and though Maven was by no means tall, he wasn’t exceptionally short either) and yet he wielded it like it was the most normal thing in the world.

“If it attacks you just run, just go. I mean it. It wanted me. You don’t have to come in.”

“Yeah, we do.” Quinn bumped her aside with his shoulder. “Don’t pull this fearless leader riding solo into the unknown bullshit now, sweetheart. We’re past that.”

Lace and Maven exchanged a look, waiting for Valkyrie to round on him for calling her that of all things, but she just rubbed the place he had bumped her absently and muttered to herself, “Are we?”

Top of the stairs. They had been very steep. Climbing them must have been difficult. They would be very sore in the morning, assuming they actually had climbed them and not just been made to believe they had. The valley gleamed now, gray superseded by the light.

They weren’t in a dream, or a nightmare. Knocking Maven over had been necessary for nothing but breaking the tension. It is very, very difficult to trick a phantasm into believing they are awake when they are dreaming. Even half as she was, she would know, and she didn’t have that prickly-skull feeling she associated with dreaming. This wasn’t right.

Wing beats, enormous and slow, with a disorienting whap-whap-whap that raised columns of ash and dust through the cave mouth none of them had seen,

and then they were in freefall and this is how it ends, how anticlimactic,

and then they weren’t.

“Well, if it isn’t your name, what is it?”

Valkyrie rolled to her feet in a motion more convulsive than fluid. She felt for her swords and was glad to see she hadn’t speared herself in the fall. None of the others appeared to have been impaled either, or frightened to death. Yet. Quinn had jammed one end of his sword into the ground and was leaning hard on the middle guard, but it was hard to tell whether he was doing that because he thought it looked suave or because was in pain. It truly could have been either. Or both.

Lace had her arms crossed, contemplative but not afraid. Maven had his sword drawn and was staring at some point above him, but he wasn’t frightened either.

None of them were.

“My apologies,” they whirled, but the cavern echoed such that it was impossible to find a source. “I would ordinarily ask permission but I was concerned the spike in fear would kill your friends. Particularly that whom is already weakened.”

“Already—?” Valkyrie narrowed her eyes, then saw what it meant. “Oh, you mean Quinn?”

Quinn flinched and glared, muttering something about “weak ass” and “kick your ass” without moving his eyes from the shape slowly moving forward from the darkness.

“I meant no disrespect,” the voice said. It was sonorous, baritone, with a clipped accent Valkyrie couldn’t place. It almost sounded more like five men speaking at once rather than one. “I have seen many Afflicted die of acute terror. It is ugly. I wished to prevent it.”

“I…thank you,” Quinn said, looking slightly ashamed.

Valkyrie stepped forward. “You drank the fear,” she said quietly. “You, it was you, you brought me here, didn’t you? Are you a dread or a phantasm or, I mean, what do you want? From me?”

The laughter sounded of silk and molasses, collected somewhere in her chest in warm pools, filling empty spaces she hadn’t known were there. It was almost as beautiful as the creature himself.

He landed before them with two more of those heavy whump-whump wingbeats and stood, arms folded, still half-smiling a little. He seemed a little under six feet tall, in comparison to Quinn, but it was the way he held himself that made him seem like a leviathan. The man—at least, it seemed to be a man—he had dark skin that made his glowing veins all the more prominent. Every vein in his body, filled with lavender light and shining bright enough to illuminate the entire cavern, glinting off the gold hoops looping through his ears and his lips. He had been using his wings to block it out before, she realized. The wings—hard to see what was happening back there, but he had more than one set of them. The feathers gleamed slightly in the light from his blood. He took off his hood.

“I am the Valkyrie,” he said, softly, not taking his eyes off of her. “I am the same as you.”

They drew closer to one another while the other three backed away, as though propelled by opposing magnetic forces.

“What do you mean, ‘the’? Is my name your title?”

“Did you really think you were the only one?” he whispered. “The only one alive, maybe, but the only one? In all the centuries of the dread plague, the nightmare sickness, you thought you were all alone?”

“I am alone,” she said, quiet and controlled to avoid betraying that her voice was shaking hard.

“Oh, child,” the Valkyrie murmured. “You have never been alone.”

She inhaled sharply.

“You’re.”

“I have waited for another, and you have come.”

And she looked into that face, saw the long white braids, the white eyelashes and eyebrows, standing out so sharply against his skin, and oh god but the eyes, the dark red-gold eyes, his tattoo a single line right down the center of his face just like me and he looked more like a god than a man, really, but he wasn’t. He was—

“They called us Valkyrie. I was not the first.”

Hands clasped behind his back, he turned away.

“I do not know how many there were, nor how many were drowned upon birth, and I cannot find it in me to hate the mothers, not when the way we were conceived—the way most of them were conceived—I hate only the fathers.”

He opened his eyes. “I was half dread, half human.”

Valkyrie almost smiled. “Half phantasm. His name is Paroxys.”

The Valkyrie tilted his head. “Paroxys? I knew him. He was always…reasonable.”