prompt oo8. ( FREEFORM, 2013 )

oo1. drop me a comment here with whoever you please. it can be someone i know or someone i don't know. whatever you want! you can leave a comment, blank or not, or put in a prompt: it can be a song, a picture, lyrics, poem, a quote, anything and everything.

oo2. please leave the character you want to be tagged with in the subject line. if you don't care, just put 'RNG' and i'll randomly pick one for you.

oo3. if you want an AU, that's fine too! you can specify the concept either in your comment, write me an opener or you can leave a gif or picture or song that has the vibe of the AU you're looking for and i can spin it that way.

oo4. i should also add that, since this is the open post for 2013, if you have something you left me the year before that didn't get continued or answered, you can feel free to leave it here again and see what happens!

oo5. if you're prompting me with smut, please leave it behind a link!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ Most things are easier when it's dark.

She comes back from the sea when the sun's starting to turn pink, when slats of orange and gold pick across rooves and the birds wake again. Her hair, wet and the color of old blood, has a sprig of something in it — some kind of algae or underwater plant, already turning a little frizzy from the island temperature, knotted at the base of her neck. Natasha doesn't seem to mind, not even when her skin prickles from the cold and sand sticks to her feet, all the way along the shore and to where the stone tiles start to press the grains into her heel.

She finds Alayne in the courtyard. It's unexpected, but these days surprise comes with a certain degree of fondness too — Natasha likes it when people can surprise her despite what she might know. ]

This feels a little early for you, [ She says mildly, in lieu of a proper hello. ]

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Edited 2013-01-02 22:10 (UTC)

[ When they come back, she makes a beeline for the little ensuite tucked in their motel room. The medicine cabinet's been stocked, disinfectant and gauze and suture thread and Natasha lays them out methodically, hooks and needles and a lighter for if they need it. It could look like a toolset Natasha has with her when there's someone seated in the chair in-front of her, mouth cruel and sharp on purpose when she says, you'll tell me what you know.

Instead, Natasha waits for him. She hops up onto the bathroom counter if only to pull down her tights, laddered and wrecked, her knees bloody and embedded with glass and gravel. Her knuckles aren't much better, but they're both skilled enough that these kind of wounds are superficial at best.

The pinky on her left hand is swollen, ugly and red. ]

You'll have to set my finger first.

how did you know!!

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[ Elliot doesn't sleep very much. When she does, more often than not, it's tucked into somebody's side; sometimes they're warm, and sometimes they're not.

Her eyes open before Rose's do and so, hours later, when the sun is up, Elliot wakes her up with a kiss to the throat. The print of her lips left on Rose's skin is sticky, smells a little sweet; when Elliot smiles, the color of her lips stretches, red drying into the cracks of her lips.

She's gone snooping through Rose's things; not unusual. She's wearing lipgloss that's not hers; a little unusual.

Elliot looks down at her, eyes wide, looking for blankness, not fire. ]

Edited 2013-01-02 22:00 (UTC)

[ There are two rules to shifting skins.

1. You can keep the name, but not the face.

2. This is meant to be a curse.

For the better part of his life, it's been easy to follow them. The first years are difficult, because they always are, but afterwards — when there's a name you like, a face you can see enough times to call your own — things are supposed to settle, and for James, they do. James Bond, 007 — it's a call-sign, because nobody lives that long and he is always, always different, ages and heights and looks so it stands to reason that nobody believes that one person can be that many.

The third, unspoken rule is that when you live forever — and you can, if you look after yourself enough — you're supposed to do the most good in the world. It's a sentiment that, while not wrong, is fallible. Bond has never seen the point to put much stock in it.

Present day in Mombasa is sweltering, the kind of heat that presses in rather than parts around. He doesn't call, doesn't write, shows up one day outside Eames' doorstep, elbows on his knees and sunglasses perched on his nose. ]

Your need a new door, [ Bond tells him because hellos, at this point, seem to be rather old. ]

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Edited 2013-01-02 22:38 (UTC)

[ There's blood and a dead body. Somewhere in the distance, crickets chirp. Funny, Natasha thinks, how it always starts out this way. (It's not funny at all.)

She wipes away the splatter on her cheek with the back of her hand, knife still clenched in her fist. Natasha hasn't killed a little girl in a long time, not since the hospital fire in Sao Paolo, but sometimes the good outweighs the bad. It's not something she loses sleep over, but the way the little girl looks — face down in her own blood, her straw-blonde hair stained copper — she looks like a tiny, broken doll. S.H.I.E.L.D called what she had belief induction. There was a scientific name for it Natasha didn't bother to memorize. She tries not to get involved in mutant politics.

She bends down to wipe the blood from her knife on the hem of the little girl's shirt. Natasha doesn't look up from her hands. ]

Did we miss anything?

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asinine - 2013-01-11 16:40 (UTC) - Expand

[ The first time she dies, she's fifteen. No; her body is fifteen. The scientists reconstruct her, of course — in the years where the USSR is at the height of their power and men like Captain America exist, cloning is second to nothing. She dies twice when she's sixteen, countless times when she's eighteen, though at seventeen she goes peacefully — at least as peacefully as she's able, vomitting something brown and tar-like until she can't anymore. The scientists always make sure she remembers nothing. After all, the serum, it changed Natalia Romanova's body — but it changed her cancer too.

By the time S.H.I.E.L.D happens — by the time she runs from and then rediscovers the Winter Soldier — she's died countless times. Hundreds. Thousands. Sometimes it's from a gunshot, sometimes it's from an injury; rarer still are the days when she gets to let the cancer run its course, her body growing cold in a motel bathtub.

They're somewhere in France and by the third day, Natasha's fever is starting to break. It means she doesn't have long left. Her head on Bucky's shoulder, she closes her eyes, settling into the mattress. ]

I think this has happened before.

[ Her voice is quiet but not weak. (Not yet.) ]

my heart hurts ;~;

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JUST AS PLANNED i mean :c

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CRYING ABOUT IT

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THIS IS SO DUMB AND SO SAD :c I REGRET MY LIFE DECISIONS

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RIGHT?! ugh this sappy angst, whyyyyyyy ;~;

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I REGRET EVERYTHING!!!

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leave me here to die

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Edited 2013-01-02 23:07 (UTC)

Edited 2013-01-02 23:19 (UTC)

[ Natasha shoots him twice; one in the shoulder, one in the chest. Both of them miss vital organs and there's no lasting damage to his hands. That's how he knows that something's wrong. (That if Natasha really wanted to hurt him — really wanted to run, to cut ties, to clear out her history — it would be with him. She'd kill him first.) It's been four months since then. She's been hard to track, but Clint's done this before, so he knows what to look for. It's not that Natasha's predictable— it's that he knows her.

He's stuck somewhere on a highway, a bridge that's backed up by car after car. Clint does okay with waiting, sometimes, if he can just mentally slip away into a different place — it's the kind of skill that doesn't come from sniper training but from having to hide from someone stronger and older than you.

But he can't, not with the blind focus behind his eyes (god, when did he last sleep) and it's a desperate move when Clint dials her number, stuck in a car on a clogged highway, his windshield thick with rain.

You can have anything, Natasha, he thinks. You can have my forgiveness, but you won't need it. You've never needed it.

Just pick up the phone. Just come home. ]

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Edited 2013-01-03 00:13 (UTC)

[ There's a P.O box somewhere in Istanbul. Natasha mails a postcard there; it's from New York City, something kitsch with the words GREETINGS FROM THE BIG APPLE! stamped on the front. On the back, there's only a time and a place. The truth is that family's a complicated thing and, yes, maybe there's never been more than one Natalia, the girl the Winter Soldier took under hand and thumb, but the Red Room spun herself plenty of spiders. (Mother Russia's worst kept secret.)

Natasha makes a point to check in, every once in a while. ]

[ When they were younger, it used to be alive. It's faded over time. The crown molding's gone, the gold dimmed down to yellow, the wallpaper long-gone and peeling. There's splinters of wood across the floor — blood, too, if you look closely enough, though that shouldn't surprise. There's a loose floorboard somewhere, two small handprints in white stamped across the underside of it. They're the size of children's hands.

The gunshot goes off first, then the slump of flesh hitting the floor. By the time Natasha's there, in the room, it smells like gunpowder. There's a cranial mess smeared on the wall beside her. ]

There's a drain in the room next door, [ she says, without much preamble. ] We can cut him up there, if you want.

[ Like she's asking: how have you been?

Isn't it good to catch up?

Your aim's gotten better. ]

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[ Depending on the kind of mission, it takes her a little while to unwind. Deep cover, solo, means at least three days to shake the sense of someone else's name and skin from her mindset. A quick, in-and-out Delta op is different — it takes her only a couple hours but the adrenaline stays with her for a long time afterwards, even after the blood and dirt's gone from her nails.

S.H.I.E.L.D's shower stalls have a plastic privacy curtain and, for the most part, that's it. (There's not much room for modesty in this line of work.) She's been in here for a little while, the water turned to scalding then cold then scalding again. Back against the tile wall, head tilted up into the spray there's a hum of something still in her bones, like a live wire that pools low in her hips, and it's— frustrating, for one thing.

Maybe it would be easier just to say yes to Hill's dinner date after all. ]

Edited 2013-01-03 06:45 (UTC)

[ Sure, S.H.I.E.L.D tells her to — they're particular that way, about their assets and liabilities — but that doesn't mean that's her only impetus. Steve's gone for the last four hours and while that's not a cause for concern, it makes some antsier than others. Natasha bargains a month's worth of paperwork away if she can find him.

And she does, eventually. It's been raining so the concrete smells sharp, that strange mix of weather and ozone. There's puddles in the pavement and it reflects the neon, wide pools of cyan and magenta, narrow slates of green. In truth, Natasha's not looking for anything — New York's a big city, and there's only so many ways you can track one person.

But she does know what it's like to feel lost. Out of place. (Lonely.)

She finds Steve Rogers in Central Park. Natasha sits down next to him and doesn't say a word. Loneliness isn't always cured by talking. She knows that, too. ]

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[ The doctor at S.H.I.E.L.D tells him to make a list. She tells him that it'll help, seeing things, because being there will cement the memory — that feeling of now that sometimes slips away from him. Steve does it because the doctor's told him to, and because he likes that feeling of putting pen to paper. It makes things— static.

(Sometimes, Steve thinks that he's painfully obvious.)

When Joan asks him, is there anything you'd like to—, the first thing he thinks of is the sky. Neon painting his feet, hands in his pockets, head tipped up in the only city he's ever called home. It makes him feel— insignificant, but in a good way. It knocks him into perspective.

Steve smiles, small, and idly scratches the back of his neck. ]

I have a list. [ A pause. ] So far it's a pretty short list.

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[ She's lucky he's in, when she knocks.

It's been less than 6 hours since Nathan arrived, knuckles raw and hands bloody. His lip's split, but that'll heal in the next couple hours; he's bruised, but that's coming off light. The whole place is rigged with a security system but not many people know about this safehouse, tucked away on the 14th floor of an apartment building in Tokyo.

He opens the door after he checks the video feed. There's still red, skin raw, between the dips of his knuckles. ]

Hey.

[ Nathan doesn't hint at casual, doesn't keep his face carefully blank — he's hard to read because that's how his life is, ripped down to the barest knife's edge, expressionless because Nathan's not in the mood to waste precious energy letting emotions show on his face. ]

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watch this become my new favorite because lady!bond is a problem.

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Edited (spamming yo inbox) 2013-01-03 23:59 (UTC)

[ Here's what they never tell you: you spend enough time chasing fear, and eventually, you become it.

Bruce has lived a long time. That kernel of green inside him has lived longer than that — before magic was retooled as science, before beasts could fly and fish could swim. It's primordial, this kind of thing. First, it was his father, a tiny boy hiding underneath the bed because when it was a Friday, particularly a Bad Friday, that was what happened. Afterwards, it was Betty, waking up one day to find blood staining his cuff and her body limp in the bathtub. After that, it was fear of being found, of being discovered, of calling that green sheen under his skin what it really was.

Here's what else they never tell you: you spend enough time being one thing, you can turn it into another.

He's not sure how the mantle of this gets passed on — Bruce only knows taht it's a feeling, a sense that's there but hard to name. He travels a lot, camps out at places like the Grand Canyon and Niagara Falls. America's usually his destination of choice. It's— quaint. He likes the road, the endless monotony of driving.

They're at a diner in some two-bit town. The smile he greets Loki with is small, self-deprecating. That seems to the story Anger sticks with, these days. ]

Welcome back, I see.

[ He kisses her because he thinks that might be the nice thing to do. No, that's not right: in Gotham he knows what that looks like, when not just a cop but anyone thinks a kiss or a warm body's gonna help. Blake kisses her because he wants to, and he thinks maybe she'll let him (not because of that, but because she'll want to), even if in reality it's her that closes in first, tips her chin so the angle of their mouths fit perfectly.

It happens a couple more times. Once, for coffee, another after lunch. It doesn't happen behind closed doors until they get caught in a rainstorm, the air thick with grit and heat and exhaust fumes, the damp concrete smell as they duck under awnings for cover. (He does invite her over because it's the nice thing to do; the pollution doesn't make for clean rain, and the last thing he wants is for her to get sick. Healthcare isn't affordable to anyone in this part of town.)

But then she's kissing him, and he's kissing her, and he likes the way she licks into his mouth, mostly sweet but a little dirty. He's halfway to hard already when he nudges her towards the bed, just in his jeans as he kisses down her stomach, down that ridge of her hip and nuzzles lightly at her thigh, fingers searching out the band of her underwear.

And it's not that Blake wants to stop, it's just. ]

Is this— okay?

[ It's night, maybe because that thing they say about monsters and the dark — maybe it's not entirely a lie. Maybe it's easier to get angry when it's dark and you think about all the people you've had to bury, and maybe that burial is a metaphor or allegory for something deeper and crueler. So monsters come out at night, and monsters are the parts of you that scare you the most, and if Tony's going to be stuck on the fucking Helicarrier she's going to run.

It's three am and amongst the agents and the patrollers, there's Tony, a steady thump-thump-thump echoing throughout its hallways. She's been at this for two hours. There's an injection site in the crook of her right elbow, and she doesn't look tired.

72 hours before this, she was in her lab, relearning organic chemistry.

(Nanotechnology is, after all, the way of the future.) ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 1 of 2

( n a t a l i e / n a t a s h a )

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Guess

i'm sorry did you want tony stark???

( e l l i o t )

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BOND

( AU )

( n o a h )

( s h e r l o c k )

( NATHAN )

NATASHA.

give me natasha

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natalia.

AU? yes, okay, au.

NATHAN.

CLINT.

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RNG.

NATASHA.

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( l i t t l e . s i s t e r )

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FINE FINE I'LL LEAVE YOU SOMETHING FANCY.

you are the biggest asshole i know tbh

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no subject

( s t e v e )

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nathan.

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bruce (au, maybe? your call!)

so this kind of....happened? orz. i'm thinking, american gods style?

tasha again i couldn't stay away i'm sorry

except for how i'm not sorry at all and this one is also for tasha

for clint.

J. BLAKE

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...you pick actually.

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