#rough drafts

[aloofobtuse]

Funny concept on what I plan to make for the 6th-grade teacher AU.

[brynnmclean]

All right. Here's what I've been thinking about though (ETA: now cleaned up and on AO3):

Celeborn falling apart in the aftermath of the war. Beleriand literally crumbling down around everyone, the water pouring in. Everyone lost people in that desperate time-- and he was a soldier wounded in body and mind-- he was lost. He lost her. Galadriel. And he lost others, too, comrades and friends from Doriath, Sirion-- blood and bodies beneath the waves, so many ghosts.

There was a point where he just... it felt like he crawled through the years. Existing, wandering, lost, lost, lost. Eventually, he found other Sindar-- Oropher who had never liked him much, Amdír who liked him well enough. Amdír said, stay with me and help our people, and so Celeborn did. They go to Edhellond first, where Celeborn loses his voice again entirely, drawing inward and trying to shield himself from painful memories of Sirion-- and then Amdír leads them to Lórinand, which Celeborn likes better. He's always felt much more at home in forests than by the sea or under a hill.

There is a little girl with silver hair, an orphan of the war. He doesn't adopt her so much as she adopts him. One day, she marches up to him and puts her tiny hand in his and orders him to tell her about the flowers that cover the ground and the birds that roost in the trees. He does his best, though his voice is a little rough. He helps her climb up a very tall tree. When she scrapes her hands, he cleans the little cuts, kisses them better at her request. When she is tired, he carries her back to where the other motherless, fatherless children stay. She clutches the end of his long silver braid in her sleep.

She's so young, all her family gone. She doesn't remember what her parents called her beyond endearments, but something in her bearing reminds him of-- well. The first time she makes him laugh, he calls her a little queen. So it's rían. Celeborn's rían. Celebrían.

He and Galadriel were waiting to have children until the war was over. Until there was peace in the land and in their hearts. Sometimes there is something like peace in the rolling hills and the whispering trees. But not all the time. And not often in his heart.

He dreams about Galadriel dancing in starlight and sunlight before shadows creep across his vision and steal her away. There's a pull in his heart to the world beyond, but he doesn't leave. But he doesn't leave the forest.

He stays and raises Celebrían as his own. He stays where his daughter can always find him.

The settlement in Lórinand grows. Amdír and Celeborn argue about establishing ties with the high-king beyond the Hithaeglir. Amdír wants nothing to do with the Noldor, but Celeborn talks him into at least having scouts out in the world beyond their forest, to gather news if nothing else. Amdír puts Celeborn in charge of them and of the border guard.

Celeborn misses his friends, his fellow marchwardens, Mablung and Beleg, long dead now, their bones in the ocean. He weeps when he tells Celebrían stories of the home he can never show her. Doriath. Sirion.

Celebrían's hand is still small in his, even when she is grown. She takes up healing as a profession. When his voice fails him, she waits for him to find it again. She listens to all of his stories.

She is there when they first see the haze of smoke in the sky and feel the rumbling of the earth. There are people out there who need our help, she says, we should do what we can to aid them-- and so. They gather intelligence from the scouts, reluctant approval from Amdír, and a small force of Sindar and Silvan.

They march under the sun and stars and-- in Eregion, Celeborn and his daughter find a ghost. Galadriel, on the battlefield, no longer lost.

[backpackingspace]

a rough sketch of an idea

Polites found odysseus in the sheep's field weapons and armor and body broken and bruised. It looked like he had been dropped from a great height. He felt his gut clench at the sight. It wasn't the first time something like this had happened. But it was the worst he had ever seen his friend.

Odysseus had been collecting more and more bruises over the past year, becoming more and more cagey about their source. About his training. "Proof of athena's favoritism" he called them with a grin "it'll all be worth it when I'm the best fighter around"

But polites couldn't help but worry. Pride and honors and achievements didn't matter if you didn't survive the training to get there. Polites desperately wished there was something more he could to do to help but even if he could convince odysseus to cease this insanity, how would even get out of it without offending the goddess?

"I take it training didn't go well, my friend?" Polites asked with a smile forcing his voice to keep its teasing edge. He extended a hand to help odysseus up off the ground.

"Shut up polites" odysseus grumbled as he threw a hand up to clumsily grasp at polites hand.

Despite the muscle odysseus was rapidly gaining polites could still haul him up easily. He'd thank the gods for his height but lately praying had left a sour taste in his mouth. As he dragged odysseus towards a well paid and secured doctor he eyed the broken spear, sword, and sheild. A glimmer of an idea started to take shape. It was likely odysseus would continue to break mortal equipment as he did battle with gods and his family had been pressuring him to choose a calling already....

"Eurylochus is coming from same tomorrow" polites chatted ideally, hoping to distract his closest friend from his pain. Odysseus groaned and banged his head against polites shoulder.

"Come now!" Polites chided through his laughter "you love the man!"

"Not when he's trying to bed my sister I dont" odysseus slurred somehow managing to drip annoyance through the concussion and other pains.

(@www-dot-why-are-you-here-dot-com tagged as promise! It's more on the angsty side of my headcanons so let me know if you only want to be tagged in the fluffy ones)

[thegeminisage]

I have to know about the dead beat ghost of George Kirk, that lit my brain up. Also Spock on Spock violence either/or. both even?

BOTH IS GOOD. tysm. this got so long don't worry about reading this entire answer lol <3

ok, so, spock on spock violence is a fanfic i conceived when i was deep in the throes of trek last autumn. but i had to wait until i had watched EVERYTHING with nimoy's spock in it before i could begin working on it, and by the time i got there, the steam sort of ran out of my engines. so i'm not sure if it'll ever get done at this point, especially considering i sort of veered back into working on something else. anyway, to general concept of this is - while it's very sweet that in the movies and in real life quinto spock and nimoy spock are friends, it's also. love and light. a little boring. i think that really, spock is an individual who is in many ways at war with himself, and when asked the age-old question "would you fight your clone or fuck him?" would unequivocally choose FIGHT every time

the very basic plot of the fic (which is really just a flimsy excuse for spock and spock to be petty cut-throat bitches at each other) is that post stid quinto spock has been traumatized by 1. the death of his mother 2. the death of his planet 3. the death of his boyfriend (hi, jim) and he's decided to break up with jim and do a kohlinahr so he doesn't have to feel grief anymore (and, with his longer vulcan lifespan, never has to watch jim die) because this shit is killing him. jim thinks this is stupid and nimoy spock also thinks this is stupid so nimoy spock and quinto spock spend a great deal of time hurling insults at one another about it.

there is also a side plot that very vaguely cribs from the tos episode "what are little girls made of?" wherein people are getting replaced by androids, and at one point, quinto spock is tempted by a jim android, because, after all:

an android jim never has to suffer! he never has to die! spock could have and love his boyfriend FOREVER AND EVER and never have to fear the pain of loss ever again! that will totally work and fix everything with absolutely zero problems, right?

since i don't actually have any prose written for this yet, i will provide an excerpt from my notes, edited slightly for clarity:

to quinto spock, nimoy spock is a living example of his every failure and his worst fears. he gave up the good fight against his own internal humanity, he TOOK A HUMAN MATE (gross!), and he allowed/indirectly caused vulcan to be destroyed. nimoy spock, old and at the end of his life, has no one. he's been mourning his jim for longer than they were ever together. the only thing he knows is the unbearable pain of grief. quinto spock fears this kind of pain more than anything. he thinks he is seeing his own future and he is desperate to prevent it via any means possible, even the kolinahr - this timeline can be different, right?

to nimoy spock, quinto spock is a living example of the very worst and most cowardly parts of himself, and wastes all the precious opportunities he has - he makes nimoy spock sick with envy. quinto spock has SO many years left to spend with jim and he's going to WASTE them just because he's afraid of what life will be like without him. worse, he's hurting the person nimoy spock loved most by pushing him away, and it's all his own (nimoy spock's) fault because vulcan was kind of his bad. by allowing vulcan to be destroyed he has ruined not only his future, but also his past. quinto spock is destroying himself from the inside over his misguided prejudice over his own humanity, and his internalized xenophobia or whatever, and he's too young and too stupid to see that the only way to get through it is to GO through it, and he won't listen to the one person he should trust above all others (himself) because he HATES HIMSELF, that's his/their whole problem

like, imagine your entire deal is self-loathing and an abject refusal to accept both halves of your extremely internally conflicted being. and then suddenly there's another version of yourself who can stand next to you, who can be blamed and yelled at (possibly punched?), who is somehow doing an EVEN WORSE JOB at being you than you already are!!!!! you have to watch this other you make mistakes so massive even YOU wouldn't do them and you guys are supposed to NOT fight somehow??

ultimately, this is a fic about confronting grief and pain rather than running away from it, but it also morphed into a kind of fix-it for generations (the movie where kirk bites it in the most underwhelming death scene ever) which turned it into a very full project because those two things are a bit at odds with each other, so i had to reoutline it, but the outline IS all ready to go, i just...haven't gotten around to it yet because i'm working on the other project. i haven't given up on it though!!!

deadbeat ghost of george kirk is essentially a story about how completely useless it is to have a ghost for a dad. not a literal ghost, it's not that kind of story, but despite how affecting the opening of the 2009 movie is, we have to contend with the sad reality that if you grow up without a dad there is a high risk of simply becoming chris pine's kirk. like, that's why he's like that, right? hard truths. i only have about 800 words of this and it's quite likely it will never be finished or posted, but every time someone says something horrible to me in real life about my dead dad (happens more often than you think) i add another rage-fueled paragraph. an excerpt (content warning for child abuse and suicidal ideation):

What's so heroic about it, anyway? Jim's dad didn't die to save eight hundred lives; he died to save two, and counted the other seven hundred ninety-eight as a happy bonus. And what became of those two people? His mother a chronically offworld functional alcoholic, married to a chronically on-world nonfunctional alcoholic, whose favorite hobby is hitting his wife's sons with his belt and whose second favorite hobby is seeing which bones he can break with his steel-toed boots. Jim himself, sent to the hell that was Tarsus IV for driving a car off a cliff, who at eleven years old had already been jaded enough to consider just going off the cliff with it. Would George Kirk do it again the same way, if he could somehow know how the world turned without him in it? Would he think it was a fair trade? Either the answer is no and he was an idiot who threw away his life for nothing, or the answer is yes and he was an asshole. Either way, it hardly amounts to heroism. What good is a dead father to anybody? They can't turn up at the school play or the track meets. They can't teach you to tie a tie or throw a punch at bullies or slip you your first beer or bring you birthday gifts. You can't give a Father's Day card to an empty grave, not if you're saying anything true. All the cards say things like Thanks for being there for me, Dad!, and all Jim knows about his father is that there is the one place he wasn't. See, Jim has been in space, which is quite literally the absence of everything. He's also been on Tarsus IV, a planet where people got so hungry they started hacking limbs off of corpses to soothe the absolute absence of food in their stomach. And yet, for all that, the absence of George Kirk is the keenest absence he's ever known.

let people send you an ask with the WIP title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it!

[painted-doe]

WIP word search

Tagged by the exceptional @bromcommie! Enjoy a bunch of snippets from some of my WIPs based on the keywords that appear in them. (These are probably longer than they're supposed to be but hey ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

My keywords were: space, sharp, sweet, home

space

From “what the water wants”, a horror story about a poltergeist haunting Bucky and Sam (although no horror makes an appearance in this part).

The one and only time he’d ever been invited over to Bucky’s place, Sam had stood in the doorway of the barren apartment and stared. For a moment he’d wondered if the elevator had taken them to the wrong floor — if maybe this apartment was empty and waiting for a tenant to move in. Because this wasn’t a space where someone lived. 

But Bucky had pinned him with a stare that said don’t fucking say it, and had shouldered past him and thrown his keys on the counter with the familiarity and confidence of a person who did, in fact, live here. Anyway, they’d both been bleeding and bruised and covered in toxic slime at the time, so there had been more urgent things on Sam’s mind.

But later that night, once they were both scrubbed and disinfected and bandaged, each wearing a pair of Bucky’s sweatpants and working their way steadily through several white boxes of Szechuan takeout on the floor in front of the TV, Sam had turned to him with purpose. Bucky had stiffened and stared straight ahead like he’d never seen anything more fascinating than the crowds cheering for Hungary’s soccer team.

“Dude,” Sam said, not unkindly, “you know you don't have to live like this?”

sharp

From “Diptych”, a two-part Sambucky fic. Part 1: Sam and Bucky are sucked into Westview and Wanda mashes them together like a couple of action figures kissing. Part 2: The aftermath when they return to real life.

Sam didn’t remember there being any children in Westview, but he must have forgotten somehow. 

Of course there were children; there were children everywhere now that Sam was noticing them. Even Marcus and Jeannie had a son, Jack. Maybe it was odd that he had forgotten about little Jack, since they lived right next door. But it was very easy not to think about that, so he didn’t.

Jack was competing in a junior league baseball game and everyone was invited. Bucky was feeling steady enough to leave the house, and that didn’t happen every day, so they put on sweaters and dusted off their baseball caps and held hands as they walked down to the baseball diamond in the crisp air. They were entering the deepest days of autumn, with Halloween right around the corner, and the low afternoon sunlight dappled the orange-red leaves of the trees that lined their little suburban street. Bucky’s winter-coloured eyes caught and held the amber light, and it softened all his sharp edges to gold; Sam’s heart flipped a little when he met his gaze and smiled.

sweet

From the upcoming second chapter of “A Candle in the Window”:

“Hi, Mr. Barnes!” Peter shouts, waving at him.

Barnes, who has just leapt onto the metal dinosaur’s spiny back and is using a combat knife in each hand to scale it like a mountain climber, looks genuinely horrified to see him. It’s actually kind of sweet.

“Is that you under there?!” he yells. “What the — get outta here, kid!”

“Thanks for coming!” Peter shouts back happily, and promptly gets knocked out of the sky mid-swing as the thing’s big metal tail smacks him. 

Fortunately, he lands in a tree. 

Unfortunately, the tree is about to be set on fire. 

The robo-dino’s mouth opens toward him, its jaws wide enough for him to stand up between them, and those are some very big pointy steel teeth, and he can see the flamethrower powering up at the back of the throat where the tongue ought to be, and all his instincts fail as for one critical second he <em>freezes</em> —

And at that exact moment, a big ball of snarling supersoldier slams fist-first right into the thing’s metal jaw, a vibranium uppercut hard enough to knock it off one of its hinges. The jaw is now dangling by one end, like a car’s bumper after a fender bender. The jet of fire that was about to melt Peter’s face off ends up going cockeyed and blasting a duck pond instead. He hopes there weren’t any ducks paddling around in there, because there definitely aren’t now.

home

from “Lagniappe”, a novel-length TFATWS story about Bucky rescuing a dog from a dogfighting ring and accidentally rehabilitating himself along the way.

The dog didn’t have a name. That was what made him decide.

He hadn’t had a name either. Not for a long time. The electricity and heavy dizzying drugs had scraped even that last dignity out of him. Even now, years later, the person-thing he’d managed to salvage and stuff back into himself was only a messy amalgamation of bits and pieces. Secondhand stories from Steve of who he’d once been; hazy snapshot memories; habits and tastes he didn’t quite remember but had been informed he once had, and so had now re-adopted out of a weird fear of somehow getting it wrong. Getting the business of being Bucky Barnes wrong. 

He was an unabashed mess, but most of the parts HYDRA had ripped out had slowly grown back, little by little. He still lost his words from time to time, but he didn’t have to carry a knife to be able to bear a trip to the grocery store. Sometimes he still woke in distress in the night, keening and shivering from the memories, but now he could look someone in the eye and tell them no if he didn’t want to obey them. Now he could go for a walk on a frosty day without losing his breath and having to call someone to take him home. He was even making amends for the things he had done — or at least was trying to, in his bitter fumbling way.

And all of that had started with his name. His name in Steve Rogers’ mouth. “Your name is James Buchanan Barnes,” Steve had told him desperately on that helicarrier, like wedging his foot into a door that was trying to slam closed — and Bucky had still fought him, had almost killed him, but the words had worked their magic. His name had begun to reawaken him. His name.

The black dog didn’t even have that.

@philtstone, @fixing-the-boat, @possumwoodpie, @clucku, @toxiclxki, @snarkythewoecrow @writethewolvesaway @wishihadatail @shackleton2 I choose you! Your keywords are: ignore, kind, lose, silver (And anyone else who wants to play, consider yourself tagged -- sorry if I missed you!)

[incendavery]

rejected rough drafts (+ one forbidden rough draft posted for my patrons only👀)

[cambionverse]

Happy March 29th!

Once again, it's Cambionverse Day and Jesse Turner's birthday. We don't have the next chapter of Envesseled ready to post yet, so we decided to post some excerpts from it instead! Please enjoy them, and as always, thank you for your patience <3

Amazon Rainforest, Brazil

"Do you think this is what it looks like?" asks Jesse as they leave, moving on foot through the towering forest until they find a place without angelic interference to let him jump. "In...Heaven or whatever. Where souls go. Do you think this is what Ben sees?"

Claire has dreaded the thought of Heaven since she was eleven years old, and some days she thinks she only survived this long out of fear of ending up there. Maybe this forest is a close analogue, if the way her skull feels about to vibrate off her spine is any indication.

"I keep thinking about what Marie said," he confesses. "About how he might be—happy there. With his mom."

"He's probably surrounded by angels," Claire retorts. "That's no one's idea of a good time, even if you're a Winchester." She doesn't want Ben to be happy in the afterlife, she realizes; either she is cruel enough to tear him out of Heaven, or cruel enough to hope he is suffering so that even being with her again would be a relief. She kicks away a vine that crosses their path and then crushes it under her heel out of sheer spite.

"But what if she's right?" says Jesse. "Don't you think—"

"No one asked you to think," she snaps. "I don't need the Antichrist's opinion of Heaven. Just take us to the next place."

Jesse stops. Claire does too, silent and glaring. He searches her face, and for a moment it's like he's looking at a stranger.

"I still want him back," Jesse says. "I didn't say I don't."

Claire flicks out her hand like she's drawing a sword. "Then stop wasting time," she says, "and let's go."

She kisses him again later that night, after a piece of grace in Kabul knocks her out too badly to continue. It's not an apology, and she doesn't try to make it one. But it does keep him from asking about Ben again.

Nile River, Egypt

"Just leave some for tomorrow," Jesse says as she wrings out her hair. The locals on shore haven't noticed them yet, but it's getting to be a close thing. "This is already more than we usually get in a day."

"I'm almost done," Claire mumbles. Her mouth tastes like copper. She reaches down again, gets hit with a flash of Castiel fighting off one of his brothers, and comes to with the river breaking across her face as Jesse pulls her up again.

"Claire," he says, holding her upright. "This is stupid. Just stop."

She ignores him, tries to pull away. When that doesn't work, she frowns and aims her mouth at his mouth instead. To her surprise, Jesse tightens his grip on her shoulders and stops her there too. When Claire's eyes refocus, she sees him watching her with a frown.

"Look," he says, quieter. "You can get your blood on my mouth if you want to. I'm still going to tell you you're going too far."

Claire reaches up to wipe her face, petulant, and only now notices that her nose has been bleeding all along. It's not that she didn't think he would notice the pattern, but he's not supposed to talk about it. A drop of red falls off her lip and stains the river red.

Jesse sighs. "It's not like I mind," he says. "The kissing, I mean, or whatever you want to call it. But just 'cause I like it doesn't mean I can't tell what you're doing."

"It's not a reward," Claire grouses.

"It can be whatever you like," says Jesse, too sincere. His hands are still holding her in place, holding her up. "You know that's always been true, don't you? And if you decide you don't want to do it anymore, that's also fine." His cheeks go a little red. "Or if, when Ben is back—"

The warmth of tolerant exasperation curdles in Claire's throat instantly. She pushes out of Jesse's arms, and this time he lets her go. "This isn't," she begins, and then chokes as the truth curse tries to twist her words. She smears more blood off her face and glares at the river. "My usual outlets aren't available right now. I've already explained what this does and doesn't mean to me. You have no excuse for wishful thinking."

She's glad she can't see whatever face he makes at that. By the time Jesse speaks again, his voice is as even as hers. "As I said. You'll do what you like." He steps out of the water. "Let me know when you're done."

Claire tastes blood the whole rest of her time in the Nile. They don't share a bed that night.

[inkweedandlizards]

WIP Wednesday!

(Or as I call it, oh fuck, it's Thursday, lol)

Thank you for the tags, @heartstringsduet, @sznofthesticks, @im-overstimulated-and-im-sad, @carlos-in-glasses, @paperstorm, @carlos-tk and @bonheur-cafe.

I'm drawing again! I had this idea after seeing that gif of Carlos's thumb on TK's throat and remembering a discussion going around here about TK giving great head. 😅

I'm gonna tag @birdclowns, @cold-blooded-jelly-doughnut, @tailoredshirt, @lemonlyman-dotcom, @thebumblecee, @lightningboltreader @sanjuwrites, @wtfuckevenknows and you (I'm out of practice so if I missed tagging you or fucked up a name, I'm so sorry 😥)

[kairos-thehumanpoet]

Pathetic

if loving you

makes me

pathetic,

then I am

a goddamn

disgrace.

~kairos💛

[hellverse]

writing dean is a form of self torture

[aloofobtuse]

Cozy heart penguin

Plus a rough sketch of a comic

These are ideas of how cozy might be drawn by me. Maybe with more time, I could come to a decision.

[brynnmclean]

Having a rough day, so even though it is Tuesday and NOT WIP Wednesday, here is a snippet from the Hellblade fic:

Senua takes an abortive step toward the desk and the lanterns, but then glances back, her face turned toward Thórgestr, but her gaze sliding just past.  “I would leave the lamp lit,” she says, her voice as tight as her shoulders, like a bowstring.  He opens his mouth to soothe her and to say it doesn’t matter to him, but she adds, low and rough, “I don’t like pitch darkness.  It brings bad memories.” “Leave it, then.”  He offers her a smile he hopes is comforting to her.  “The light did not bother me earlier and it will not bother me now.  I could sleep through a storm.”  He pushes the blankets back on the other side of the bed best he can, making the invitation clear. She settles under the blankets without any other protests, curled up on her side.  He wishes he could turn onto his side to face her, but he knows it will hurt—and worse, he imagines him moving that much might upset her. Still, he reaches out over the covers.  “Here.  Take my hand.”  She hesitates for a moment and then does, making a soft sound when he skates his fingers past her palm so that she is touching his wrist and can feel the steady beat of his pulse if she still wants to mark it.  “My heart won’t give out,” he promises, and falls asleep pleased to have seen even the briefest of sights—her true smile out of the corner of his eye.

[makeshiftstory]

Finally, for now, we're at the end of the art dump before the second page for Changes is uploaded tonight. These are some prototype sketches for a teacup tattoo I'm thinking about getting in the future. It's a bit of a sisters' joke amongst us (Little Sister, Smaller Sister, and then Teacup Sister). I'll like do a combination of the three teacups to make the best one possible for my first tattoo.

[thegeminisage]

signs that it's time to go to bed.

[painted-doe]

WIP word search, part 2: the word-searchening

Got tagged again by dear @writethewolvesaway and I had so much fun with the first round that I decided to go again! Especially since you guys were so encouraging about Lagniappe... enjoy :)

My keywords were: whisper, bleak, yellow, glass

whisper From an untitled (but almost complete) Sambucky fic in which Valentina shows up, activates some latent Winter Soldier programming that causes Bucky to doubt his hard-won autonomy, and angst ensues.

“And let’s not kid ourselves, Sam Wilson’s not much better. Guys like him, they want a fixer-upper. They want the satisfaction of repairing something. But you… oh, Sarge, how long until he realizes you’re just way, way too broken for him to fix? Honey, I’m trying to help you. I’m here to offer you something.”

He spat on her expensive leather boot. She didn’t flinch. “A life as your little wind-up killer? Like I said. Get. Fucked.”

“A purpose,” she said, unruffled. “A real purpose, working with people who respect you for what you are. Who don’t expect you to be anything more than what you are.”

Her fingers found his chin, played sweetly with the divot there. He jerked his face away but she clung tighter, dug her thumbnail into the soft skin of his lower lip.

“Isn’t it hard?” she whispered. “Aren’t all those expectations just so goddamn heavy? People keep telling you to get better, get with the times, make amends. Make amends for being hurt all those years. Isn’t that wild?”

“Nobody’s telling me shit,” he hissed.

“Sure they are.” She smiled. “I get your therapy transcripts. I like to read them over breakfast.”

bleak From the same untitled fic as above.

Sam shook his head. "God, Shuri’s going to be devastated, she was so sure she’d…”

“I know. I know.”

“Don’t you think she’s going to want to be part of this?”

Bucky looked away. The low sunlight turned his dark hair to gold, flopping over his eyes. It was getting long and shaggy, but somehow still looked good. Everything looked good on Bucky. It was deeply unfair.

“She has the right to say no to us, at least,” he said at last. “It’s her work we’re messing with. Fine. I’ll call her. You work on tracking down the red book.”

“And de Fontaine? We have to figure out what she wanted, why she--”

“Don’t bother. We know. She said she was here to pick something up.” Bucky looked up at him. Jaw clenched, eyes big and bleak and vulnerable in that way that made him look like a scared child, and Sam’s heart twisted hard. “She wants the Winter Soldier.”

yellow Another snippet from from “Lagniappe”.

How could Sarah look him in the eye? Let alone allow him around her boys? Didn’t she know? Didn’t she know how deep the stains were fixed in him?

But she slid her hand down his arm in a friendly way, the metal one, and she smiled. 

All the angels he'd ever seen in stained glass had been fair-skinned and delicate and golden-haired; none of them had ever looked like solid, dark Sarah Wilson in the woodsy yellow sunlight. But here she was, brighter than any of them.

glass Yet another from "Lagniappe":

Those days of evaluations before the pardon had been mostly spent in windowless concrete rooms being interviewed by shrink after shrink. Being asked the same questions again and again in different ways to see if they could trick him into answering inconsistently. Having white coats repeatedly read off the list of trigger words that no longer sank hooks into his brain but still set his whole body trembling and sick, only to give him humiliating orders to see if he’d follow them: Stand on one foot. Sing me “Happy Birthday”. Drop and give me twenty. The only pleasure he’d taken in those sessions was in telling them to fuck off.

Jimmy Woo had hovered at the edges of those hazy shitty days. He was surprisingly high up the ladder of authority for such a young agent, and Bucky knew he’d often been in the other room, watching him through one-way glass or through the lens of a security camera. Sometimes Woo had been the one bringing him little paper cups of terrible black coffee, or styrofoam-wrapped sandwiches that tasted no better than their packaging, or, once, mercifully, a cigarette. For all his awkward glibness, the guy had been clever and respectful; he’d let Bucky go through it all without being restrained in mag-cuffs, and he’d looked him in the eye like a human being when he spoke to him. For a g-man, Woo had been all right.

If you read this far and you're a writer, consider yourself tagged! Even if (like me) you've been tagged before! Your words for this round are: guard, break, true, left

[voraciouspangolin]

Going through my notes and I stumbled upon this... script I guess? Well, I don't even know if I wrote it, I have no recollection of doing so. But the way it's laid out matches the way I brainstorm ideas so Ig so?

Anyways so it's a script/roughdraft for what I assume was going to be a comic about demoman and his mother

I don't know what to do with it so I'll just leave it here for wayward souls to read if they so choose to do so

It's unfinished but, yeah

Badlands, New Mexico, Demo's Mansion, Morning.

Demo: For the last time mum. I don't have to go to work, it's me morning off.

Mum: "Morning off"? Oh, Lord help me, you've been fired. I knew it.

Demo: *sigh* No, mum. It's just the one mornin'.

Mum: oh, well, that's fine then, I'm sure. I just wish your poor ol' da could take a morning off. From spinnin' in his grave at your idleness!

Demo: I'm holdin' down three jobs, mum.

Mum: Three jobs! Ha! Listen to him! Tavish, your father, god rest him, had twenty six jobs! And he still found the time to teach you the family trade!

Demo: I made five million dollars last year, mum. We live in a mansion.

Mum: Aye, and who told you to buy a bloody mansion, I'd like to know. These're your prime earning years. You're halfway to retirement already. Mark me, boy: No Demoman worth his sulfur ever had an eye in his head past thirty!

Demo: Mm-hm. Tea's up, mum.

Mum: It wasn't easy bringing you up scottish, lad. Lean years. In those days you could bomb mercs all day and still not have enough for a loaf an dozen eggs. That family portrait cost more'n what we paid for the castle! And more than the materials we used t'rig the road with the family recipe for when those arse-faces found out we didna pay for the castle!

Demo: ...(reaching to grab some scrunpy for his own tea)

Mum: Yer da walked fifteen miles in the rain to blow up the queen of england for a nickel!

Demo: I'll get more jobs, mum. I promise.

[ in this panel we see a family photo of the Degroot family from before Demo lost his eye. They are standing in front of a family emblem. It has three bombs and a wide and round bottle of alcohol, with the text "Regionem Caecoru(m? n?) ... Re... Luscus" the portrait is in sharp focus meanwhile the two are out of focus in the foreground. In front of the portrait, there is a small bench, as though someone spent so long looking at it that they found it suitable to bring something to sit on. There is a smaller version of the portrait hung right beneath the paintint. It is carved from a stone slab, with very precise depth and relief etched into the family's features. There is no paint. It is completely featureless apart from the carving. Parts of the portrait seem different in texture, reflecting the light a bit more, as though buffed out. Stray and smeared fingerprints of grease and gunpowder on these smoother areas reveal the source of its polish; the blind woman with a fiery whip in her words spends indefinite amounts of time tracing the stone faces of her son and late husband, dry fingertips with damaged nerve endings struggling to pick up the finer details of the portrait. ]

Mum: I just hate to see you squandering your gifts.

Demo: I know, mum.

[Beat. Mum angles her head towards where she knows her loyal stool sat, in front of that portrait. ]

Mum: [sigh] I miss him, Tavish. Every day.

Demo: ....I know, mum. Bloody hell, me one

Eyelander: pattern welded damascus steel. Harmonically balanced. Slow forged for generations in the bowels of captured english kings. Um, and it's haunted.