Whispers

I'm afraid, I'm completely unfamiliar with this fandom and don't do video games. Sorry.

Would you like to pick another?

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rebelsheart

I can do that.

Card Captor Sakura something you are familiar with?

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Not actually. I've written fanfic for Take the Lead, X-Men Movieverse, Secret Garden, Misc. Movies, X-Men Comicverse, Mandie series Movieverse, X-Men: Evolution, Excalibur, Roswell, La Femme Nikita, Divergent Trilogy, Awake, and Avengers Movieverse.

I'm familiar with most of the Star Treks, Andromeda, and a bunch of other stuff I'm not thinking of right now.

Edited Date: 2013-07-02 03:41 am (UTC)

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rebelsheart

Ok, I'll think overnight.

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rebelsheart

Or I could come up with an idea...

The one mind Prodigy didn't want to learn from. (X-Men, Comics)

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oooh!

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Am currently thick in research. You will have fic.

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rebelsheart

I'm going vacation for a week, take your time :)

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A/N: I've written better in my life, but hopefully you like this.

Reed Richards. Tony Stark. Franklin Richards.

It wasn't any one particular mind that gave David pause, regardless of what he was willing to admit out loud. It was a particular kind of mind. Absolute power corrupts absolutely and all that. What was nature thinking of when it made him?

He had walked out of that session with Emma and Dani feeling completely changed by the experience of all he could be, and it left him with a profound distaste for the idea of using his power to learn from anyone who had that sort of genius in just their one mind.

In his vision, he made a list of all the people he wanted to meet and learn from. Now...

Maya Hansen. Bruce Banner.

It was true that with his blocks in place, he couldn't retain their knowledge. But later? If anything ever happened to David's walls, he'd remember everything.

Yo Hinsen. Can't do anything about Henry McCoy. Nathaniel Essex.

#

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rebelsheart

heh. and given the last status of prodigy I am aware... oh dear :)

I like it!

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Yay! I'm glad it worked. And thanks for giving me a new character to learn about and challenge myself with. I'm thinking I'm going to have to find out more about him.

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rebelsheart

I really like his power and how he was worked into his different major roles over time.

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Tell you what.

Prompt for prompt, m'kay? Mainly because I haven't dipped my toe in fandom for a while.

Now. Seeing as you've used your Riley 919 icon, how would you feel about writing something/anything in the 919 'verse? Dealer's choice as to characters, but the following prompt:
Well, maybe later. Not yet.

If you're not comfortable with that, gimmie some Clint Barton.
Like an old comfortable coat that is tattered and torn...

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I think I'm going to one-up that. That crazy grin is totally apropos, chica.

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a) I am a little bit terrified now. Excited, but terrified.

b) re: The Raven Boys -- totally worth a read/listen/etc. once you get your hands on it. Even if you don't end up caring for it, the story is a fascinating one, and for a nice change in YA lit, has the romance as a side-bit. Lots of bromance, lots of mythology, and lots of humour.

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Like an old comfortable coat that is tattered and torn, Colleen Barton’s favorite bow fit neatly in her hand. Collie settled into position, sliding her callused hands along the bow and nocked an arrow. An unusual accessory for a SHIELD agent, but one she would never go without. She kept the wood too well to call it tattered, but it was worn with wearing like she was worn.

Wait for it. Wait for it. Her head was clear, professional eye sighting along the arrow.

Staked out on a high roof, leg wedged in the architectural overhang on a narrow, cramped European style alleyway. The mark due to pass through under Collie’s perch was one of the best agents Russia’s Red Room had ever fielded, but nobody had informed Nikolai Romanoff that he had become a liability, too dangerous for his own people to control. They had sold him out in exchange for something way above Collie’s pay grade to know. She’d bet her regular paycheck that Phil knew.

Her leg itched, making her want to stretch it. Collie was used to lying in wait. She stayed still, breathing soft enough to make every light breeze gusting scattered leaves, discarded bits of paper, and detritus seem almost loud. Almost. She was listening for footsteps.

“Barton. What’s your position?” Phil’s calm, no-nonsense alto sounded quietly through Collie’s earpiece. The woman had an uncanny knack for checking in precisely eight minutes after she’d settled in.

“In the perch,” Collie replied even more quietly.

“Nikolai’s been spotted. You have perhaps twenty minutes.” Phil was good like that. She kept her agents informed on the ground.

Collie murmured acknowledgment. Twenty minutes, probably less, waiting for a cold-blooded heartless killer. One she would be wise to not underestimate. All it would take is one tip-off and Romanoff would be on her in a minute with lethal combat skills that put SHIELD’s to shame. The man was a weapon.

Wait for it. Wait for it. Still her breathing to as shallow as her lungs would allow. Not a twitch, not a whisper.

She heard footsteps.

Hand on the bow. Steady now.

A confident stride. Boots. Soft footfalls of the professional, just loud enough to not draw the wrong kind of attention.

Sight straight along the arrow. Not a muscle moving.

Near that corner shop and rounding into the alleyway to his rendezvous.

Clear-headed. Ready to let fly.

Red hair just wisping over his forehead under his cap. Blowing out steam in the chilly afternoon air. Warm brown eyes gliding upward, ready for an ambush.

An ambush—

Damn.

That one slow moment when time froze, the target locked, and all she had to do was release the d— arrow. Warm brown eyes gliding upward, confident stride of an oh so Russian agent; red hair brushing the forehead of that cold-blooded killer she kept telling herself he was.

The arrow stayed nocked. He passed under Collie’s perch and into the doorway of an inn for his rendezvous with a client.

Tension ran out of her body with one single, soundless, wordless exclamation. She leaned her head back and let the clock of reality start ticking again. Uncertainty. A flicker in those eyes like quicksilver. What choice had they ever given him?

“Barton?” Phil’s voice came again. “Report.”

She’d bet her regular paycheck Philippa Coulson had known Collie would falter. Collie slid the earpiece out of her ear, turned it off, glanced out over the tangle of overhanging buildings and rooftops. Ten minutes, maybe less.

She was officially certifiable if she thought she could really pull a Phil, but she was officially going to try.

Collie shimmied up the side of the building and off onto the roof, into street clothes, pack her bow away carefully and pack the backup weapons in her clothes for hand-to-hand combat should things go badly. They would go badly. She could feel it.

She yanked the scrunci out of her short brown hair, combed it out with her fingers, and took to another street for her descent. Eight minutes, maybe less.

Probably less.

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The inn had a small eating establishment on its eastern end, which is where she found him. Collie didn’t do a whole lot of fancy undercovers like Nikolai. She didn’t try to be flirtatious or seductive. She simply sidled up to the bar comfortably far enough to be nonthreatening, comfortably close enough to draw Nikolai’s attention.

Seriously, those eyes would be the death of her. They should be cold like a Russian killer called Atrax after one of the deadliest spiders in the world. Instead, they were warm, interested, and all too human. She hadn’t been informed of any of the details of the meeting. She knew she wouldn’t know what to say as a safeword, but she looked up as if she did when Nikolai deliberately caught her eye.

“Love is for children,” he commented dryly over his vodka. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

Collie tilted her head to one side, then slid over a slip of paper from her dress. She could do this, pretend a hawk was looking out for a spider.

Nikolai palmed the paper discreetly, glanced at it. No visible reaction, but suddenly there was a cold knife under her ribs and breathing wouldn’t be easy if she didn’t want to draw blood. Dead to rights. She should have stuck an arrow in him while she had the chance.

“You want to go somewhere?” she asked, as if this were casual conversation and she picked up men regularly in any place that had a bar. “You seem like the kind of guy I’d like to know.”

Then that smooth Russian smile came out at last. “Maybe later.”

Four minutes, likely less. “After you figure out my price, huh?” Collie muttered, a tad too cynically. She really didn’t do seductive all that well and it wasn’t like she hadn’t just laid all her cards on the counter when she slid over the evidence that someone had sold him out.

And that was the primary question, wasn’t it? Why in heaven or earth would Collie put her life on the line to warn him someone wanted his head? He had enough enemies. He could have expected a double-cross without her.

She suddenly realized Nikolai had lifted her hand in his, as if he would kiss it—feeling her fingertips and cocking that eyebrow. Hawkeye. Only one agent in the business odd enough to have those callouses from an instrument of war as out-of-date as a comfortable old coat.

“Who sent you?” he asked. Collie could hear the tone she’d come to know of certainty one or both of them would end up dead.

She couldn’t very well answer nobody, so she glanced at the clock and knew in her bones Phil was staking out an entry. “You want to deal?”

Trust wasn’t on the table. Both of them knew it, but only Collie knew it needed to be.

“Immunity, protection, and a black hole pulled in behind you.” She ran down the list quickly. “My reinforcements are behind me.” Literally. She could feel Phil’s laserlike gaze burning a hole in her back.

He narrowed eyes at her, pressed the knife, answered harshly, “For what?”

Collie let out the breath she’d been holding, suddenly realizing she had him enough to quit trying. It was an honest gleam of amusement in her eyes and a twinkle of a smile that she answered from cold, hard experience. “A steady paycheck.”

Incredulous. Impossible. Because she was trying not to laugh as she had when Phil had offered it to her. How could she laugh in a moment like this?

“You’re offering me a job?” Incredulous, amused despite himself. He turned his attention squarely in the direction of that gaze at Collie’s back. “Why?”

“It’d be quite the coup.”

“More to kill me.”

Collie shook her head. She hadn’t shot the arrow when she should have. That coup was good and gone.

“I need a down payment,” Nikolai said abruptly, returning his stare to Collie.

“Keep the knife then,” she said. “Keep it on me if you want. And you’re willing to follow me up to where I left my bow.” She held up her earpiece, fitted it in while Nikolai watched. Nikolai didn’t need a knife. He could snap her neck with his bare hands. “Phil. You mind helping the cat drag in a spider?”

Phil’s snort of amusement told Collie all she needed to know.

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When Collie finally got out of debriefing, she met the sour faces of her senior officers.

“You are officially written up,” Agent Hill informed her with a frown on his face.

Phil just gave her the look—the one that said never do that again. “Nikolai passed initial interviews. He will be joining our organization officially.”

Collie nodded, trying to figure out whether she should be chastened or pleased.

Phil turned to Hill and held out her hand. “Now I believe you owe me fifty dollars.”

Hill growled but pulled the bill out of his wallet. “And she calls herself a professional.”

Collie stared at the exchange, then shook her head, no longer feeling either. She would have bet her paycheck Phil knew she would end up letting Atrax live. Apparently, it would’ve been a pretty safe bet.

~ fin ~

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DFKJFGFGAJO'EWGprgop\sdv\orgjgaejo

WOMAN.

WOMAN.

WHAT IS THIS THAT YOU HAVE DONE TO ME. AVENGERS 919 HOLY CRAP.

I'm sitting here giggling like a little girl on Christmas morning because OH MY GOD this is amazing.

Atrax. Phillipa. Collie. OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD.

This is beautiful. The way you describe Collie slowing down and shallowing her breathing is sheer perfection. I actually felt my own breathing slow a little. Wait for it. Wait for it.

And then you have their meeting. Nikolai being exactly what he ought to be -- charming, and edged as all get out. Giving him the handle Atrax is so incredibly fitting it's insane. And then Collie, brash and stupid-brave, just sauntering in there and making nice conversation while Nikolai has a knife to her ribs. *spins her chair around in glee*

AND PHILLIPA WHO IS AMAZING AND I LOVE HER FOREVER.

Oh, good gravy. You have no idea how happy this makes me. And you have no idea how much I want to play in this universe now. Would you like me to write you a little Avengers 919?

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Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! :gleeful giggles ensue: She likes it! :throws confetti: And I get fic out of this. I will love you with much loving for some serious fic out of this.

Bonus points for Antonia Stark. :grins:

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Oh, you will receive fic. YOU WILL RECEIVE FIC.

Wanna give me a prompt, or shall I just run off cackling into ~~the night~~ Microsoft Word?

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Cackling is good. :grins:

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You mind if I post this on AO3/FF.net? Trying to get better at this consolidated archive thing.

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I don't mind at all!

And for the record, I am having far too much fun with your piece. By which I mean pain. Lots of pain.

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Why does fun for the author usually mean misery for our poor characters? Ah, well. You know I'll love it.

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Well then. Enjoy it!

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Also, did you ever end up caving in and trying "The Raven Boys"? We chatted about a mutual interest in it, and I (like I'd said) read it.

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My computer couldn't open the audio file! I grumbled and whined and then went back to plotting ~~world~~ literary domination by means of writing soul-sucking nonfic articles until I can develop a book-budget. :le sigh:

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I wanted to give some kind of prompt, even liked the idea of a prompt for a prompt, but between work and other projects I'm overwhelmed and not very creative (while at the same time bombarded by about fifty new novel ideas that I will never have time for) so...

I'm just going to give you this, I'm sure you'll recognize it:

"I got red in my ledger. I'd like to wipe it out."

And I was thinking Kingdoms and Thorn for it, so not very creative there, either, but it's a prompt?

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Very fitting. Still interviewing characters to see who I'm going to play with.

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Since it would work for multiple characters, you could make a series of it if they were willing to cooperate.

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Now there's a thought.

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A dangerous sort of one. You could be stuck with them for a long time.

Maybe. Sometimes those things run out sooner than expected, though.

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"Do you think God could ever redeem us after the things we've done?" Justus worded it carefully, threw it out right as he pulled out of his stretches and picked up the throwing knives.

Shift turned, glanced over her shoulder, but finished her own stretches before answering with exaggerated patience. "You're asking the wrong person."

"You have a better idea of who I should ask?" Justus aimed a knife at her heart and threw it. Keep it balanced. Straight follow-through.

"You're the one who believes in God," she pointed out, tossed the knife back over her shoulder straight for his lungs.

His reflexes were good. He caught it. This ws one of the most nerve-wracking forms of practice she had taught him. His own growing ease with what he did on a daily basis bothered him, a lot. He covered it with a shrug that was anything but casual. "Lapsed, remember?"

Shift snorted, caught the knife at her hip, and retorted sharply. "If you didn't believe, you wouldn't be asking me that question."

Justus sighed and admitted, "Maybe I don't believe everything I used to. I can't believe that God wanted me to choose to knowingly do what I do instead of die."

It was weakness, this survival instinct that kept the blood flowing in his veins, that let him learn from the young woman standing halfway across the room on the training mats how to kill, seduce, assassinate, infiltrate, spy. It was his own failure and he couldn't believe anymore in the faith he had learned from his father that this was somehow part of God's sovereign will. This was Justus' own sin and he bore it.

"I just..." He glanced away, then back again, realizing Shift had said nothing. "I don't know what else to believe."

She said nothing, just turned that knife over and over in her hand and he realized suddenly that it was one of her favorites and from his first lesson. She had forced him to plunge that knife into her body and wouldn't let up until he was willing to do it. First blood. Only after, did he learn she'd had Meld on hand to heal her.

"I keep two sets of books," Shift answered abruptly.

She turned the knife around and hurled it toward his gut. He caught it.

Hands free, she gestured with her words. "One is red and one is black. If I ever get an ounce of black in the first book, I see if there's any way I can transfer the balance to the second."

Justus tried to comprehend that. He had only one life to live, one set of deeds and choices for or against his maker.

"Don't you say grace isn't accounted for in works?" She lifted a skeptical brow, eyes scathing.

He nodded but held onto the knife. Make your point, make your point. This held the air of another lesson, something he wasn't sure he wanted to know.

Shift studied him until she realized he wouldn't respond, then her face hardened and he had forgotten she could look so unreservedly deadly and uncaring. "How can I hold my books out to your God and ask Him to wipe out the ledger I've written in blood when I don't regret it?"

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Breath. Breathing. Remember how to breathe. Justus stared at her, caught himself falling out the momentary shock he'd frozen himself in. They all regretted it. They all regretted the monsters they had become. Right?

"What's the second book?" he asked.

She lowered her hands to her sides and stated calmly, "My exception."

He hadn't known she had taken one. Every single member of their team was allowed an exception, one rule or requirement of the government who leashed them that they were allowed to refuse. Sear wouldn't have sex. Meld wouldn't kill in the manner he healed. The Database didn't get assigned to the front-lines unless her leader had no other alternative to mission success. Justus got to say no to a mission assignment if it crossed a line he wouldn't. Each one... He went down the mental list and came to Shift. Shift did every single thing their handlers asked of her. There was no atrocity she wouldn't commit, no horror she flinched at if her handlers ordered her into the field.

"I used to have black in my book," he finally said. I used to live the way I believed. I used to be willing to die for those beliefs. He threw the knife, aim true.

Wrist flicked out, caught it. "I sold my soul to open a second set of books."

Justus hadn't learned to never flinch. "Don't sell your heart to open a third."

The moment between the words stretched out. She tilted her head at him in genuine compassion. "Justus. You're asking the wrong person."

She aimed the knife at his jugular. He caught it.

#

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I was with Justus, wanting them all to regret the monsters they'd become.

The part about the second and third books... Ouch. Very powerful words.

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Shift is unflinchingly honest with herself. She regrets having to become a monster. She doesn't regret becoming one when it was the price for freeing her daughter. It would be better to say, she doesn't regret paying that price, only that the price was necessary.

The part you honed in on: that was exactly what gut-punched me. I still can't believe I write such angst, but I'm glad it did what it was intended to.

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Regret. It wasn't something Shift often indulged in, and it was an indulgence. She shifted out of her clothes—only way to keep a knife on her body at all times—and ignored the excess mass as she stepped under the spray of her private shower and washed away her conversation with Justus. Her protege. Hers.

D— it. She hated that it was the first one she didn't share with Watcher.

Hot water washed out the most dirt, but it couldn't clean her soul of blood or wipe away the accounts she kept in her own personal history of horrors. She had walked back after the one vacation they had ever given her—that one opportunity to pretend she was normal, not a killer, not a whore, not a government operative with more atrocities on her hands than any teenager had a right to. Who was she kidding? Nothing about this was right—and they had showed her into the cell where Justus was chained and already bleeding from the beating and bruising they'd given him.

Quick assessment. She'd done this sort of thing too long to be less than quick. He'd been captured roughly four or five days prior and been given barely enough water to keep him alive, little food. Pre-processing. Her stomach clenched. It was illegal to make more special types.

"He's yours if you want him." Chandler nodded in Justus' direction.

Shift hated the team handler with a loathing that only waited to finish him off because Watcher had told her to let him live. Now Shift was team leader. If she killed Chandler, it would come back to haunt her team.

She turned to Justus, took his head in her hands, and yanked it up to look into his eyes.

He was resigned to his own death. She could see his fate written there. But there was strength too.

She had lost her conscience long ago, gave it away with her only child, knowing she would never have the right to say no to what she was asked ever again. Chandler didn't know about Anna, but Shift wasn't about to let him have a reason to look up her exceptions file and decide she wasn't holding up her end of the bargain. And now, Shift knew the difference between good and evil, right and wrong. She'd say there was hope for her yet, but she didn't care about the difference between right and wrong and that's why she recognized this death in the prisoner's eyes.

But she had a heart. She had a heart. And for some d— reason, it was still beating.

She stepped back, straightened, shifted just slightly and put her hand on the cold metal of the gun slung in a holster at the hip of her dress. She was wearing dark auburn hair today, naturally sultry eyes, a thickness of muscle she omitted for her blonde, innocent self. This skin of hers didn't care about the consequences.

"I never lose one of my own," Shift spat out harshly. It was a promise Watcher had made and kept. It was the promise that no matter what it took to keep her people alive, Shift was willing to pay that price.

She saw the flicker of understanding and uncertainty in his eyes.

"Do you want my protection?" It was cruel to ask it of him, ask him to decide between death and becoming a monster, but she had just enough heart left to offer him the choice between a clean conscience and a life beyond this moment, a chance for enough years to eventually find his own absolution for what she would make of him. She would break him, remake him, and turn him into something he'd never want to be if he wanted to live. It was the only path to survival.

His throat worked, raw perhaps from the lack of water, and then finally, slowly, and with too much understanding in those eyes, said, "Yes."

She breathed out normally, suddenly aware she hadn't been. She wouldn't have to add a mercy killing to her sins, just the destruction of a life. She'd done that too many times to count. Shift nodded abruptly to Chandler. "I'll take him."

First blood.

Edited Date: 2013-07-07 04:06 pm (UTC)

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Shift stepped out of the shower, toweled dry, and shifted her clothes back to strip them off and change.

She carefully undid the security on her top bureau drawer and untaped a picture from under the top of the wood. Flipped it over, looked at it. A brunette toddler, laughing over something her foster father had said. Anna. Beautiful. Shift's only unwitting mistake.

She couldn't regret it. Oh, she could regret finding out about sex the stupid way, regret having gotten pregnant, regret that she'd had to sell her soul to keep this tiny, beautiful daughter of hers innocent and out of the Department which claimed ownership of any children born to operatives. But she couldn't regret that Anna was alive, beautiful, innocent. She couldn't regret that her daughter would never be an operative, that her daughter would never kill, that her daughter would never whore herself out for a country she didn't believe in, that her daughter was Shift's one exception to the rules of the Department and that Shift could never have any other.

How can I hold my books out to your God and ask Him to wipe out the ledger I've written in blood when I don't regret it?" she had asked Justus, her protege, the one person she had trained who wondered if he could ever wash the bloodstains from his own history.

She couldn't. She just... couldn't.

Shift tucked the picture carefully back in its place, smoothing over the tape with her thumb. She redid the security on her drawer, and shifted her gun into its holster, picked up the latest evaluation report on Justus' performance. Excellent. She'd taught him well.

It would take some doing to lessen the weight she'd placed on him when she offered her protection. He honestly considered his unwillingness to die for failure to perform a weakness.

Maybe she had no soul. Justus reminded her she still had a heart and it was beating. Grace, mercy, forgiveness for presumptuous sin—what did she know of that?

Shift left her room and headed down to the base's library to do some research. She had a heart. She could do this for him. She had a heart. And for some d— reason, it was still beating.

#

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This dynamic of theirs is very interesting.

I like the repetition of how her heart is still beating.

I'd say a lot more and probably get lost in tangents, but I'm too tired to be coherent, so I will stop there.

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