war stories ficathon

[anythingbutgrey]

War Stories: A Comment Ficathon



Welcome to the war stories ficathon. Some quick guidelines:

What can I prompt and how do I do so?

Basically whatever you want, as long as there's a core component of a war story therein. Can be pre-, post-, or intra-war as long as it is, at its core, about the war. I'm pretty general with my concept of fictional conflicts, so if you've got a battle or a zombie apocalypse or a revolution, you're good to go. That means you can take a fandom that has a canonical war (like, say, Harry Potter) or you can take a fandom that doesn't have a war (like, say, New Girl) and plop them into a Hunger Games war AU or a zombie apocalypse. Have fun with it. I'm grim about my war stories but you don't have to be.

Prompts should contain the following format:

Fandom (not optional, can be multi-fandom or crossover) - Characters/Ship (optional) - Timeline (optional) - Prompt (which may be a plot, song lyric, quote, etc., but is not optional)

In other words, you can leave a character and/or a ship, and/or a timeline, which are optional, and a prompt, which is not. If you want, you can just leave a set of song lyrics and see what people do with them. If you want, you can just leave a timeline with those lyrics, or a just a character, or all three.

How do I respond?

There are no restrictions in terms of word count, format, tense, point of view, etc. Please title all of your response fics as such in bold at the top of your comment (make sure to close the bold tag!) since LJ took out comment titles because they're dumb:

Title - Character/Ship - Timeline

Presumably, your fics will contain these three things even if they weren't in the prompt. You can also fill prompts that have already been filled. If something speaks to you, as it were, it doesn't matter if there's already fic for it. You can write your own.

How do I promote?

Here's a tumblr post (gen image if you have no idea who Mako Mori is in which case go see Pacific Rim ASAP and thank me later)

Promotion link with image:

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Comments

[anythingbutgrey.livejournal.com]

Questions/comments

Leave 'em here

[saintgilbert.livejournal.com]

Do the fills have to be fic, or is art acceptable too? :)

[anythingbutgrey.livejournal.com]

pacific rim, mako mori, i was meant to be a warrior, please / make me a hercules

[hyacinthian.livejournal.com]

footsteps of giants, 1/3

The heroes are the ones the stories are written about. The ones with the songs. The women in long sleeved robes and sorrows that wind through hair dark as night, the men who carry burdens on their shoulders that feel like swords. There are battles. There are songs.

There is singing.

The heroes, those are the ones you like to read about best. And, in the end, did you…

When it came down to it, do you think that was a destiny? Or were you a casualty of some other nameless force? The universe in its madness?

A city torn to pieces and what you remember are the old songs your mother never sang you to get you to sleep.

(She is asleep now. A whole city, asleep.)

-

There are entire lists of reasons why he doesn't allow you to pilot a Jaeger. He doesn't give them to you. He doesn't need to. Here is the man that scooped you out of the dust and told you that everything was all right; here is the man that saved you; here is the man that still saves you. When the nightmares press in on you from all sides and you feel trapped in that alleyway again, choking on dust and ash and your own grief, he is always there, his large arm a weight against your shoulders.

There is a hope. There is tomorrow. There is the weight of his arm on your frame and you remember.

The war gets better; the war gets worse; Stacker remains a constant, and you trust -- you know to guide by him always.

That is another lesson you've learned over time. One that has never been proven wrong.

-

The first time you step into the suit is like nothing else you have ever imagined. (And you have imagined, haven't you? Have dreamt about the moment when you would be able to stare down your own monsters, the shadows that chase you down empty streets and shriek like the spirits mother warned you about. Or did she tease you? Or have you forgotten?

But you remember the street. You remember the light weight of the shoe in your hand, the feel of the stones poking through your thin socks to scratch at your heels, the endless screaming of metal and the monsters.

You were young enough to believe in monsters still, and there they were, writ large, chasing after you because you had done something. Hadn't you? Monsters only ever chased after people that had angered them, or was that spirits - but you found a hideaway and you prayed and you sobbed and you still remember the taste of that street, the smell of wet garbage, the blood pulsing in your throat, your face stinging from tears. You still remember, and you want…) The images flood back, crisp and clean, and you are back; you have a shot; you have your chance -

You curl your fist and you prepare to knock at the beast with all that you have. What have you had before? You were a small, light girl - a child - hiding from something bigger. Now you are big. Now you can strike.

-

They stop you. They say more control, mako; they say the first time is always bad for everyone. Drifting, it turns out, is something that must be done with absolute focus and rigid control. Drifting, it turns out, means allowing yourself to experience the pain and move on, means something other than letting your pain control you.

Raleigh talks about controlling it, and you wonder about the dark things locked away in his heart. In his mind, in his heart. The things you saw in brief flashes across your vision. The things you felt and heard. Oh, fear -- panic, too -- all familiar ghosts.

But it is the way Stacker looks at you. You have never felt such a heaviness hit you in your entire life - the weight of disappointing him, the weight of failing a minor god, the weight of space.

(And you have tried, and you have failed. Stacker, right again. So you will gather up your papers and your notes and you will return to observing other fighters fight. You will show up to the meetings and you will be diligent. The cause is still your cause, even if you can't bloody your knuckles and feel the gravity of a body knocking into the ground.

[anythingbutgrey.livejournal.com]

harry potter, hermione granger, They gave me a medal for my valor / Leaden trumpets spit the soot of power

[rumpledlinen.livejournal.com]

harry potter, hermione(/ron), leaden trumpets

They write about her in the Prophet.

She has an interview with someone--she hears the name and lets it wash over her, nods and smiles at all the right times.

"You're a hero," the woman says, holding out a hand. Her nails are clipped too short and her smile is too big. "I want to thank you personally for what you did.

Hermione smiles and takes her hand and feels like she's going to be sick.

*

She goes to her parents, in Australia. She undoes the curse and twists her hands together, tears streaming down her face. They don't forgive her, but they will; she places all of her hope in that.

Ron is there with her, rubbing her back and whispering into her ear, and she loves him so much she eels faint with it. He's the only one that understands, he and Harry--he understands and he throws away the paper when it comes, offers to take her to Muggle restaurants. (They don't go back to Diagon Alley. Not at first.)

"I love you," he whispers into her collarbone, and she shivers and nods, feeling the moonlight streaming in through their window.

I love you, too, she thinks, and it's not a lie.

*

What they don't understand is that she's not a hero, she's nothing special. When she heard what Harry did, that he was going to kill himself, all that ran through her mind was I wouldn't. She's not a hero, she's a girl who was thrown into war and thrown against the ground. She packed dirt under her fingernails but didn't ever fully give herself to the fight.

She's not ashamed of this. Ron tells her that he too thought like that -

("I couldn't have done what Harry did," he whispers against her hair. It comes out broken, like a secret. "I couldn't.")

- and it should make her feel better, but nothing these days does.

*

She sits with a mug of tea and her fingers shake, these days.

She wonders if it's ever going to pass.

[smilingsoprano.livejournal.com]

LOST - Juliet/Sawyer/Kate (or any combo thereof) - post-apocalyptic warzone

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

pacific rim, mako mori/raleigh beckett, shell-shock.

[8611.livejournal.com]

the avengers, tony + natasha (platonic or romantic), waking up to ash and dust.

[littlehands.livejournal.com]

the avengers, tony + natasha (platonic or romantic), waking up to ash and dust.

Another day, another pile of rubble to dig themselves out from under. Waking up on the edge of disaster, to see the destruction from blown out windows. Tony wakes up on the floor again, bruises from crown to sole. Head pillowed in his arms, the sunlight is far too bright, the day is too far gone. ‘Tasha is standing by the windows or where they would have been, soft jeans and a old Rolling Stones t-shirt - blowing the steam off of a cup of coffee. Pushing to his knees and then standing, she offers a hand, a bracing palm to his back. There is ash in her hair, a swollen lip and a slight smile, a bit of light in her eyes.

“How bad?”

“Pretty bad.”

She hands the coffee over, his eyes adjust and see the vast space laid out beneath them. The space echos and he leans into her. She holds him and blinks into the sunlight.

[undyinglovee.livejournal.com]

the avengers, clint/natasha, pacific rim AU

[songandsilence.livejournal.com]

(Note: This is the first time I've written anything from the Marvel 'verse. Not sure why this prompt jumped out at me. But it did, so here I am!)

++

part i

Budapest had been a disaster. Then again, Clint could have called that. What do you expect when you assign him a co-pilot who happened to be someone he had, at one point, been told to assassinate?

When the Jaeger program started, Clint had been at the front of the line to sign up. Nothing was holding him down – no family, a past wiped clean – just the job. It didn’t matter that he had been a government assassin. Now he was saving lives.

At the beginning, many of the original construction sites had been in the eastern United States or Europe – far from the Pacific, protected, surrounded by tech innovation and countries willing to throw billions of dollars at engineers. Later, when they had gotten the hang of jaeger tech and were churning out a couple of jaegers a year, they moved to be closer to the action. But Clint had packed his bags and gone to Budapest.

Then they learned that the jaeger had to be piloted by two people. Two. It changed everything. The best teams were families, already connected by blood and shared memories. That was when Clint started to get nervous. Before, his lack of family had been an asset. He had no ties, no baggage. And now?

He waits to see what they would do with him now, and when he gets the call to report to the Marshall on duty he is pretty sure they were going to boot him out. Never in a million years does he expect to see her there.

“You know each other,” the Marshall says. It isn't a question. Their eyes are locked across the room. It makes him furious how easily she stands there. As if she belongs.

“Yes, sir,” he replies tightly. “If you’ll recall, she is incredibly dangerous. I was sent to kill her.”

“But you made another call,” the Marshall muses, arms crossed. Something flickers across the woman’s face. Her shoulders tighten. “The kaiju have wiped the slate clean, Barton. Like it or not, you two are going to test to see if you’re drift compatible. We need you both.”

Left alone, they face off like wary beasts. Teeth clenched, Clint grinds out, “Natasha Romanoff.”

Coolly, she nods and replies, “Agent Barton.” Then silence. No, thank you for not killing me, no excuses, no nothing. Just a steady gaze.

He frowns. “I’m not an agent anymore. I’m a jaeger pilot.”

“Not without another person, you’re not,” comes her clipped reply.

It almost sends him through the roof, but he reigns in his fury. “At least we already know we’re physically compatible. That fight in São Paulo speaks for itself.” A tiny, smug smile tugs up one corner of her mouth. “I guess we’ll see tomorrow if we’re drift compatible.” He leaves her standing there and storms back to his bunk.

That night, he dreams of São Paulo.

[myherodrowning.livejournal.com]

pacific rim, mako mori / raleigh becket, it's time to face the future and raleigh has to come to terms with who he wants with him

[songandsilence.livejournal.com]

(first pacific rim fic eeeeeeek)

The easiest thing turns out to be figuring out where they go. They stay in Hong Kong for a while, recovering, rebuilding. There are ceremonies and a global press tour that leaves them weary and passing out in the same hotel bed more than once. For some time, their lives aren’t their own. But after that, as the world settles into reconstruction, they find themselves with a breathtaking amount of choice.

Raleigh never wants to go back to Alaska, but Mako is intrigued by the west coast of the U.S. They settle on Seattle, which has a kinder climate that Alaska and a vibrant Japanese population. There is also a hint that modified jaegers are being made to help rebuild, and they might get the chance to drift again. But before they get anything else figured out, they have a small house in a wooded part of the city with a view of the mountains, sun seeping into their windows through evergreen branches.

Their house. Their windows.

Without ever acknowledging it, Raleigh had begun reassembling his life based on the assumption that she would be with him. Sure, they had parted ways a couple of times in the last year, but the world wanted to see them together – the jaeger pilot team that saved the world. They were a packaged set. And then Seattle…they had just started talking about it without actually talking about it. If they were in this together or not.

The moment he realizes it, Raleigh panics. It happens in the middle of the day, when he is home and she’s at work and there is nothing to do but sit there and panic. What if she had something else planned? Wouldn’t have known that in the drift? What if he hadn’t? What if things were changing? What if she wanted time to herself?

Does he want something else?

He goes for a run, breathing in the spring air still heavy from the rain that just passed. He thinks. Hard. The mere thought that he hadn’t even considered any other options terrifies him a little, and for a wild moment he thinks maybe he needs to get halfway across the world and just disappear. The thought brings him to a sudden halt, and he nearly gets hit by a car. Is there somewhere else he should be?

Then he gets home, and she is standing in the kitchen with her back to him, looking at something on her tablet. Just the sight of her makes the tension in his chest unravel. Slowly, he comes up beside her and is greeted with a quick smile. The one he sees every da, like a habit she isn’t aware of.

“Hey,” he says, trying to keep his tone casual. “Is there…anything else you’d rather be doing? Any place you’d rather be?” Anyone else you’d rather be with? He doesn’t say it, but her eyes narrow just a tiny bit and he knows she felt the question.

Turning to face him fully, she sets down her tablet and places her hands flat on the countertop. “You think I would be here if I didn’t want to be?”

The grin that breaks across his face is sheepish, relieved. So relieved that she reaches across and smacks his arm, knowing he was doubting himself. Doubting them. In response, he gathers her in his arms with a smile and kisses her temple.

“You’re sweaty,” she complains into his neck.

A breath of a laugh leaves his mouth, rustling her hair. “There isn’t anywhere I’d rather be either. Or anyone I’d rather be with.”

[magisterequitum.livejournal.com]

the hunger games, gale/katniss, you're everything, you're all i've got

[anythingbutgrey.livejournal.com]

as long as we're going down, maybe you should stick around (katniss/gale, MJ, d13 u no)

She picks up a habit after the arena burns: tying knots. She makes them out of everything. Leaves of grass, electrical wires, plucked-out threads from her sweater, anything and everything. She triple knots her shoelaces just trying to connect the ends of things.

Gale is the first and last person to notice. No one else here actually sees her; they just see the Mockingjay halo they've fastened through her skull.

"You want to tell me why you're doing that?" he asks. It's the day they come back from visiting District 12 and she can't keep her hands still.

She drops the threads she's tangling together. "Doing what?"

It's a terrible feigned innocence, something that, had Gale tried it, would have offended her. Gale doesn't look offended, though. Gale looks sad. She wants to take those jittering hands and loosen the look at the corner of his mouth.

Gale asks ,"Can I do anything?" It's a quiet question, too quiet for Gale, with something so raw beneath it that she would cry if she weren't, well, Katniss Everdeen, Girl on Fire and Hard as a Rock now.

"No," she says, and somehow finds her fingers running along his jaw. He keeps forgetting to shave, but she likes the scratchiness under her skin. For her part, she keeps forgetting she shouldn't touch him. Peeta might be dead, but that doesn't mean she knows what to do with Gale. She pulls her fingers back, feeling burned. "You've done enough for me. For all of us."

He shakes his head once. "I don't think there's ever going to be enough, Katniss," he says, says it as a whisper, says her name with something like—no, she won't name it. Reverence isn't something she wants. She tries to turn away, but finds his fingers at her jawline now, gentle as ever. The callouses of his hands on her skin grounds her somehow, in a time and place she understands. The world can go to hell and burn but at least Gale will always make sense.

"Don't disappear on me, okay?" he says. Looking up at him, everyone else in the bunker suddenly seems twelve miles away. She doesn't know if she likes that, feeling alone with Gale, feeling pulled toward him by the invisible knots that have always lived between them. He's staring at her lips again, and keeps doing that. She doesn't know what do with any of it, and hopes he doesn't try and kiss her again. The last kiss almost got them both killed, if he'll recall.

Katniss swallows, then nods. "You got it," she says, and then, against every ounce of better judgment she has left, ties their fingers into knots.

[myherodrowning.livejournal.com]

captain america: the first avenger, steve/bucky, steve needs to reaffirm they're both here and alive and together after rescuing bucky from the hydra base

[magisterequitum.livejournal.com]

the hunger games, gale/katniss, we're burning brighter and brighter

[rumpledlinen.livejournal.com]

here's a small thing! this takes place sometime between the hunger games and catching fire and is kind of au. sorry about that.

consume and be consumed, gale/katniss, r

"Kiss me," she whispers, because she has to.

His hand traces her cheek and he stares at her, eyes impassive.

She has to feel something other than this; she wants to sleep and think of him instead of the war. (She remembers burning and screaming and the terrible taste of death lingers in her mouth. She wakes up in a cold sweat, hands reaching for someone never there. All of the deaths blend together into Rue's face, tears streaking down her cheeks.)

His hands are steady. He holds her close and kisses her once, softly. And it's nothing like her kiss with Peeta; it's soft, delicate almost. This isn't a kiss to save a life but to hold her afloat, keep her steady. Her heartbeat slows down as they kiss, a slow and lazy sort of thing.

He pulls away, resting his forehead against hers. She's dimly aware that she's taking in great shuddering breaths, and it almost surprises her because she feels so calm about it.

She kisses him again and presses him down into her worn old mattress. (Her mother and Prim are gone, and she's thankful for that as the bed creaks and groans under their weight.) Her knees slide to either side of him and she presses herself down, wanting to consume and be consumed.

"Oh," she breathes out as he mouths at her neck. She grabs his wrists and holds him down, shaking out of his mouth's reach. She wants to be in control here, needs to be in control.

He gasps and his hips jerk up to meet hers and she sees stars. He flips them over but doesn't bear down on her, simply holds himself above.

For a long moment, they are still. The delicate moment holds until it snaps.

She looks at him. His eyes are dark. This time, when he touches her face, his fingers tremble.

[magisterequitum.livejournal.com]

harry potter, hermione/harry, they keep calling us heroes, i don't see anything heroic here at all

[rumpledlinen.livejournal.com]

filled here (http://rumpledlinen.livejournal.com/46549.html)! :)

[myherodrowning.livejournal.com]

vikings, athelstan character study, he never gets used to the violence; sees blood on his hands even though it's never been there

[rumpledlinen.livejournal.com]

atone for my sins, athelstan, pg

As time goes on, he thinks of England less and less.

It isn't that he stops missing home; it's that he feels like a traitor in his own skin. He knows the Bible by heart, whispers the words as he drags his finger across the page though the text is all-but unreadable. It doesn't make up, though, for the fact that he's seen death, seen men with their heads cut off right in front of him.

After a while, he stops mentioning it. Bjorn seems to like him more, after that. (Ragnar has never cared.)

*

He doesn't get used to it.

It doesn't matter how many times he sees it, he never quite gets used to the sight and smell of blood pouring over him. His fingers tremble and he wants to fix it, wants to save every life, but he cannot.

(There is beauty in a Viking death, yes; beauty in the funeral pyre, beauty in the words said, in the idea of Valhalla. There is no beauty in this. There is no beauty in war, in savagery.)

*

"Father," he whispers, when he cannot sleep. He is at a loss for words after that. How can he apologize, how can he atone for the sins he has witnessed? He has wrought none of the suffering but been implicit in the actions.

He clasps his fingers together, leans his forehead against them, and thinks I am sorry, Father, forgive me. It doesn't help.

[myherodrowning.livejournal.com]

pacific rim, hercules and chuck, hercules thinks of the conversations he should've had with his son

[hotpiexoxo.livejournal.com]

how long is the night [1/2]–– hercules and chuck, pacific rim; pg13 for alcohol content, angst

Tendo is quiet as we both sit and have our respective drinks, and in my mind I thank him for not talking. I guess there's that part of me that's so used to not having to say what I mean to or want to –– or rather, the part of me that just makes the excuse that I don't have to say what I want to say –– and I don't know if it'll ever go away. It seems so glaringly loud now, my inability to communicate, when there is no more immediate need for me to be in a Jaeger again. I take a gulp of my whiskey that bites back at me with that thought because I know that it's not true. My inability to communicate became glaringly obvious before this late evening/early morning.

Max snores and kicks lightly at my foot. I imagine he's dreaming of running and playing, maybe with Chuck.

His name...Chuck... my son's name, makes me pour more of the whiskey in my glass. Tendo watches me do so but doesn't say a thing, just tops off his own. Tendo never piloted a Jaeger, we never drifted together, but he still can silently tell me the support that he has for me right now, by staying up too late and drinking too much and having no words to sit stale between us.

I'm sure others are celebrating still. In fact, I can hear some of it. Others maybe are sleeping, tired from the war, not knowing what to do when they wake up tomorrow. We're not the only mourners tonight, I know that much. And I know that Tendo isn't just here for me, but he's doing his own mourning too. We've all lost friends and parts of our support system, not just today but also throughout the entire war. We've all lost family, lost loved ones.

Mako, I'm sure, is mourning the late Marshall in a silent lonely way. My mourning is silent less because of respect and more because of I don't know the words to say anymore. I don't know if I ever did.

I went into war fully believing in the possibility that I wouldn't see the end of it. The rate of living when you're a co–pilot is small. But fight after fight, I was still here. I've seen the world, a dream of mine when I was younger (when I was the age that my son is, was, was––), although I didn't figure in the idea of seeing it being destroyed by aliens as I battled them. When my son joined as my co–pilot I tried to tell myself to figure in the reality of his mortality but never was able to fully grasp that, I can see that now.

I could have lost him any day during the war, but I lost him in the final hour.

He'll be regarded as a hero, even more so than he already became in life. Society loves to alleviate a sacrificed hero, that I know from this war alone. I can see his picture, right there amongst the Marshall's, the Kaidonovsky's, the Wei's. My arm the only reason my picture isn't right next to his, where it belongs.

[duskendales.livejournal.com]

game of thrones, robb/sansa; in our bedroom after the war

[duskendales.livejournal.com]

teen wolf; team human; i'm only human, i come with knives

[8611.livejournal.com]

pulse - team human (allison/scott + danny/ethan) - AU - 1/4

I apologize that I went like insanely off prompt here. D: This is probably not what you were expecting or thinking, haha.

---

She is born to a woman with steel shoulders and a man with scars across his palms. They tell her stories of stars when she
is young, of bright lights and giant cities. Stories about the ships in deep orbit that were left to drift in the black after
everything happened.

She’ll meet a boy, later in life, with close-cropped hair and a toothy smile, who goes a bit quiet when people mention the
pulse. His eyes skip across her face as he plays with a buttonhole on his shirt and worries at his bottom lip.

“My mom was up there,” Stiles tells her, even later, when they’ve been drinking and Lydia has her head in his lap (she’s
watching Allison though, her eyes sharp).

“I’m sorry,” Allison says, and she means it.

(Her mother has red on her hands and red on her skin and her clothes and Allison is trying to stop it, trying to hold back a
river with human hands.)

“You know how it goes,” Stiles says, shrugging, and Allison nods, because she does.

---

They found each other after everything had happened, after the draft.

“Well that’s some shit luck,” Kate tells her when Allison calls her after her number shows up in the morning paper.

“Seriously,” Allison says as she scrolls through the other numbers on her tablet, although it lacks heat. Kate enlisted; Allison
doesn’t begrudge her that.

“How’s your dad?”

“Coping.”

“And you are too?”

“Yeah,” Allison says.

“Well, I guess I’ll be seeing you soon, kiddo.”

After they hang up Allison picks up one of her knives from where it’s sitting on her desk, staring at it for a moment before
she throws it across the room.

It stays embedded in the wall until she ships out.

---

Allison is born to a steel woman and a scarred man and she is born human. She grows up hearing the stories about how
humans went to the stars, and came home, built on the technology they had learned from the black.

Something happened out there, something besides tech got brought back, and the people who went back to the stars were
only playing at being human. They called them h+.

Her parents tell her these stories, of the tall, lithe, almost-humans with something alien, something robotic, in them,
something that makes them a bit harder to kill, a bit harder to read.

She is told to stay away from them, she is told to watch out for them after the pulse, when her father and mother vanish for
stretches at a time and come home more worn.

(And the time her mother leaves home for the last time in a box of bone and ash.)

Scott, though, she knows Scott is good, and she’s not wrong.

---

Lydia is her bunkmate. She’s got hair past the regulation length and refuses to cut it, choosing instead to braid it and wind it
up at the back of her head.

“It’s my hair,” Lydia says, like this is the most basic thing possible.

(Later, Allison will run her fingers through it, when this is over, and Lydia can let her braid down.)

There are four of them in that room in the end, Lydia and Allison, and Danny and Stiles.

“I probably just should have enlisted,” Danny says one night, when they’re jogging on the track behind the barracks. “My
family’s all military.”

“But?” Stiles prompts, because Stiles is a splinter.

“There was a guy,” Danny says, like it’s nothing, but Allison recognizes something in his words.

She finds him later, when it’s almost lights out and Lydia and Stiles are still missing.

“H+?” She asks, and he looks at her in confusion for a moment. “Your guy.”

“Yeah,” Danny says, quietly, and they spend the rest of the night side by side, making sure their side arms and combat
knives are in working order.

[songandsilence.livejournal.com]

orphan black - what happened to paul in afghanistan? who cares. there was, however, a clone there.

[anythingbutgrey.livejournal.com]

'who cares?'

bless you omg.

[8611.livejournal.com]

star trek, kirk/mccoy, praetorian guard.

[songandsilence.livejournal.com]

teen wolf - pacific rim au - lydia and allison are drift compatible

[kryptic-pear.livejournal.com]

like sisters in blood - teen wolf/pr au

"I'm a scientist, I don't drift."

Allison grabs her hand, "Lydia, I need you."

In the background Stiles trips over something, cursing, before piping up, "Take her! Her math takes up the half of the room I could be using to store more Kaiju parts."

"Drifting is.." Lydia pauses, choosing a word with carefully pursed lips, "Irrational."

"Lydia," Allison is desperate, she has to get back in the fight, she has to do something, "I believe you. I believe more of the Kaiju are coming. And more. Until we're all dead. And I'm not going to stand around and let that happen. You and I both know the Wall is going to be nothing more than tin foil to the stuff that comes out next."

Allison needs this, since losing her mother she's been trying to find a single partner who could be drift-compatible. Scott and Isaac had tried to help her, but they didn't have time to help her what with their own Jaeger to run and the constant travel. She had put off asking Lydia for a month, trying the drift with every recruit who could match her. But the burden of her memories is something no seems able to bear. At times, she can feel the pain, her mother's pain, even when she's not drifting like some terrible scar that's been left behind.

Lydia looks at her, but the gaze lasts only a second before she glances away, "I'll only try once."

"Thank you," Allison breathes, "Thank you, thank you."

------------------------

Stepping into Lydia's mind is more comfortable than even her mother's had been. When she and her mother fought the Kaiju, they were bonded, they were close. But they also knew every shortcoming they saw in the other, they felt every argument as an instantaneous burst of comprehension. Nothing was resolved, it was merely understood.

She can feel the sting of loneliness that tints Lydia's childhood, the aching comfort of admiration, the perfect brightness of Lydia, every memory laid bare even the briefest flash before silence of true drifting feels the same. Crisp, detailed, pain is catalogued and removed, happiness is as well. Lydia's control makes Allison's own ever stronger current of grief and fear feel manageable.

Scott and Isaac work as tethers for each other, where Isaac can get lost in grief, Scott gets lost in every bright and shining moment of happiness. They work as counterbalances. This is never how Allison worked. When she is in a neural handshake, she is side by side. It is Lydia's very presence in her mind that keeps her from chasing the rabbit of her past. Lydia, for all her pointed looks and slivered smiles has never treated Allison like a fool, never acted like she must lift Allison up. They merely exist together for a time each facing the challenge of remaining focused, together.

With Lydia with her, inside of her, for the first time since her mother's death she feels like humankind might just have a chance.

[angerfish.livejournal.com]

dangan ronpa, shingeki no kyojin AU - the hope's peak students in a trainee squad.

[angerfish.livejournal.com]

pretty little liars, pacific rim AU - team Sparia as co-pilots

[angerfish.livejournal.com]

spartacus, non-gladiator slaves training for war - wait, I'll be swifter than the speed of light

[angerfish.livejournal.com]

twisted/hunger games AU, jo and lacey - lacey is that year's tribute, jo has to be her mentor

[electrumqueen.livejournal.com]

the hunger games, gale/johanna, she's cleared to go into the capitol

[poppypickle.livejournal.com]

+1,000,000

[delacourtings.livejournal.com]

rogue, lydia/allison, after the wolves destroy everything, they're all that's left

"They say there's people in Detroit." She says, polishing the blood off her knife. She using a t-shirt she stole from a rotting corpse.

"Oh." Lydia says, eyes running over the pages of a book.

She always does this. Reads the books they find before they burn them for heat.

Allison sighs, tucks the knife into the holder on her belt.

"Wake me when it's next watch?"

"Mmm-hmm."

Allison lies down, presses her cheek against the cold, hard floor.

The rustle of the pages eventually lull her to sleep.

---

"Werewolf Apocalypse'..."

"White House Down..."

"Rabid animals..."

"...appear human..."

"...no closer to finding a cure."

"impulsive, aggressive..."

"...can not be stopped..."

"...not human..."

---

She wakes with a start, beads of sweat on her forehead.

"Allison," Lydia says, hand on her shoulder, cool to the touch. Allison breathes, leaning into it.

"No," Lydia says harshly, shaking her. "We have to go. Come on, Allison, we have to go now."

Her instincts kick in, she's on her feet in seconds, her left arm protecting Lydia, the gun with wolfsbane bullets outstretched dangerously in her right.

"No," she says, "not yet."

Allison's not quite all there, head still filled with overlapping voices and wrangled carcasses of wolves she once knew.

It takes her three scans around the room for her to process what Lydia says.

"How soon?"

There's a loud crash, a snarl, and the shuffle of someone probing the remnants of the broken home they've taken cover in.

Lydia meets her eyes. "Now."

Allison's hidden in a matter of seconds, weaponry digging into her palm. Lydia's in the middle of the room, wide-eyed and gazing, ready to play victim.

She whimpers, and Allison can feel the moment it stops rummaging and starts following the trail of Lydia's scent. The thing about the wolves: they thrive on fear.

It kicks the door open, eyes hungry and searching, red.

Not red like an alpha. Red like the blood pouring from her mother, her father, Scott.

It goes straight for Lydia, she lets it get close, close enough to run it's nose along her neck. Close enough to where it's intoxicated by the scent of a possible kill.

She stabs it in the heart.

It stumbles backward, surprised, and it eyes transform to outrage. It swings back it's arm, but by the time the claws brush her cheek, Allison's already got two arrows in his back.

It whimpers, falls to it's knees. Lydia starts the fire.

They drag it, toss it into the blaze.

Lydia sighs as she lets her book follow after it.

Allison stares, watches as it's engulfed by flames. Lydia starts to move about, gathering up what little they have. She talks while she does so, but Allison doesn't hear her, only hears the crackling of the embers.

She doesn't come to until there's a hand placed in hers. It's warm.

"So, Detroit?"

The hand in hers squeezes. She smiles.

"Detroit."