anythingbutgrey | war stories ficathon

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:

Other banners:

More incoming

Text link:

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

the avengers, clint/natasha, pacific rim AU

(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!)

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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.

part ii

They almost blow up the entire facility.

Clint had slipped into the drift carrying an immense amount of dread. Very few people had ever drifted, let alone proven drift compatible. He had watched the footage – he knew what happened when this went wrong. Now, locked into an unnamed jaeger prototype by her side, his heart was pounding out of his chest.

There is a whoosh and then he is floating in blue, misty memories. At first they are his own – the death of his parents, the orphanage, running away with his brother – before they start to bleed into something different. Her consciousness brushes his, and he catches a glimpse of a fire and feels her fear like copper on his tongue. The flood of images takes his breath away. It no longer feels as though they were two separate people with individual memories. He feels her the fear and uncertainty of her upbringing as strongly as he feels his own. He understands it. Once, just briefly, he catches a glimpse of his own face.

Natasha hesitates, and starts to pull back.

Suddenly Clint remembers exactly who he is drifting with, and -

Left hemisphere out of alignment. Right hemisphere out of alignment.

But he could still see, feel, hear, smell what had been in her memories. The fire. Running. Always running. Something deep inside of him aches. He understands her. As much as he wants to hate her, he understands her.

About the same time he comes to this realization, there is a yell over the coms and he realizes that the jaeger prototype has become detached from its moorings and is stumbling backwards. His feet move without thinking in the harness, and everything is off balance. A gigantic arm swings out, knocks a chunk out of a wall and sending concrete tumbling down on the heads of the people watching.

Next to him, he feels her in the same place he is, half in and half out of their joined memories, confused and uncertain and hating it.

“Tasha! Tasha, can you hear me?”

Through clenched teeth, she yells back, “Loud and clear, cowboy! We need to get aligned and get control of this thing.”

“Copy that.”

Taking a deep breath, he slips back into the drift. Lets it wash over him. Lets her wash over him. There is a pause, like a hitched breath, and then they click together. Clint nearly gasps out loud again, feeling them join so seamlessly. They move together, swinging one leg back to catch them, to stabilize. Arms and legs moving in sync, they steady the massive machine that somehow feels like just an extension of their own bodies. There is nothing like this, Clint thinks.

It’s not like they don’t get in trouble for it, but they are standing side by side as the Marshall reprimands them. After, they walk out the door together and, without saying a word, turn the same direction down the hall.

He has picked up her gait, he thinks. Just a little bit. But he remembers it from tracking her, and from the drift. Beside him, she slowly comes to a halt and faces him. She’s standing like he sometimes does – feet apart, arms clasped behind her back.

“I’d say we’re drift compatible,” she says with a tiny smirk. With her red hair pulled back off of her face, she is all pale skin and sharp angles and a face he knows as well as his own. “No matter how mad they are, they need us. They’ll finish that jaeger and they’ll give it to us.”

He nods. “That was…” What sort of word covers what happened in the drift? What it feels like? There is nothing. So instead he looks at her, and knows she understands. He grins. “Ready to go kill some kaiju?”

“Of course.” They begin to walk again. She glances at him sideways. “You called me Tasha in there.”

“Did I?” For some reason he’s smiling. “I guess I did.”

war stories ficathon

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