Meanderings of a Fandom Magpie

From my Happy Steve Bingo story, "By Stars Benign"

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Natasha’s gaze was quite serious. “You don’t know anything about him, Steve.”

This wasn’t quite as true as she believed—Steve had gone through the folder containing his tenant’s rental application (such as it was) and he knew the bare bones of the man’s story. He was a veteran, now working as a freelance photographer. He had come into an inheritance, which accounted for the year’s rent paid in advance. And apparently—Steve’s mouth quirked, remembering the grey tabby who had been so fascinated by his repair work on the sink—he had a cat. “He could be anyone,” she went on. “Maybe even Hydra, here to watch you.”

From my first story for Happy Steve Bingo 2019, "By Stars Benign."

--//--

“Steve will do fine,” Clint stated from where he sat next to Natasha. “You’ve helped me out enough in my building in BedStuy to know what you know and get help with what you don’t know.”

“You didn’t know that stuff from before?” Pepper asked.

Steve always appreciated that she acknowledged there had been a before for him—that he hadn’t always been strong and fit, that he hadn’t always been this. ”Nah,” he answered. “Sawdust would have got my asthma going and I was half deaf in one ear and working on going deaf in the other. No way could I have heard anybody’s instructions.” And nobody but Bucky and his mam would have taken the time, he thought but didn’t say. “Plus, I was color blind. Not someone you’d want around wiring.”

..from Chapter 10 of "The Ability to Stop," which is coming right along :D

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Bucky recalled the solidity of the Barton’s home, which had sat vacant for a similar length of time. It hadn’t needed much in the way of repairs either. “I’m sure they won’t.” He folded his arms. “So…White Wolf, Shuri?”

She might have flushed, but it was difficult to tell. “It’s…well, you’ve become a bit of a legend. The White Wolf is from one of ours; a protector, a guardian, made lame defending the pack, but who still keeps fighting.”

Bucky didn’t blush easily the way Steve did; never had, but he felt the back of his neck growing hot. “And did you know about this?” he asked Steve.

Steve grinned, the bastard. “I might have, yeah. Wanda told me in one of her letters that Samkelo called you that. Looks like it might have stuck.”

From Chapter Ten of "The Ability to Stop"

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“Buck, we should talk first. Why was your go-bag missing from the closet?”

Bucky’s hands paused at the zipper of the fly on his jeans, an action that seemed likely to send Steve’s thoughts off into some other direction entirely. “Look under the bed, Stevie,” he said softly.

The bag was there on Bucky’s side of the bed, not even opened. “You were worried,” Bucky said. “You thought I was going to leave.”

Steve clamped down on the words that wanted to escape: You have before. Instead, he said, “We…we always kept missing each other, before. I…I didn’t know what to think.”

Some of the pressure had left his chest with the words, and breathing was coming easier. Bucky came to sit next to him on the floor. As always, Steve was attracted by Bucky’s easy grace---something Steve himself had never possessed. Even with the serum, the only grace he had was in fighting. For Bucky, it was something deeper than blood and bone.

From Chapter 10 of "The Ability to Stop":

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“I didn’t trust my own mind,” Clint told him. His gaze was knowing and far too old for his years. “You know how that is, I’d imagine. Yeah, he helped me---at least he helped me start to separate what Loki had done to me from who I was. That was how Loki worked; he made you do those things because you wanted to please him, the bastard.”

Bucky remembered Alexander Pierce’s honeyed words. “I get it,” he said softly.

“You’re probably the only one who would,” Clint agreed. He stared down at the ground, unseeing. “I won’t say the recovery from that was fun or easy but knowing my mind was my own again? It helped.”

From Chapter 10 of "The Ability to Stop" (because I'm not sure how much I'll be online tomorrow)

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“Dr. Methuli and I have been asked to consult---on a part-time basis---with Samkelo to help him better understand the mental health needs of refugees. We have taken them in before, on a small scale, case-by-case basis, but with our new king’s policy of openness, we both see that responsibility expanding in the years to come. While your particular situation is unique---”

“God, I hope,” Steve muttered under his breath.

Viwe smiled. “You do have an unusual perspective, you must admit. Anything you could tell me will be useful. And I will only reveal the specifics of what you tell me with your consent.”

...and some updates.

But first, the six sentences, from my RBB:

“Art school. Can I…do that? I’ve got a high school diploma from 1935 and a baptismal record instead of a birth certificate because I was born at home,” Steve answered. “None of which I can actually show to anyone because nobody would believe it.” He remembered that particular conversation with one of SHIELD’s liaisons vividly (“We’re just here to help you, Captain Rogers,” said in a way that had set off almost all of Steve’s alarms) and it was probably no coincidence that the same liaison had balked at returning what remained of Steve’s property (dog tags, Peggy’s compass) from the Valkyrie because he needed to “learn to live in this century.”

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And now for updates:

Chapter Ten (the LAST CHAPTER...I think...) of "The Ability to Stop" now has a title ("Every New Beginning") and is...not anywhere near done. I don't expect to get much done on it until after I finish my RBB.

The RBB story is currently 11,613 words and 28 pages long. Which, considering the hellscape that was my life in the last couple of weeks, is something of a miracle. I think I have one more chapter on that too, then the epilogue. :)

My Super Fluffy Stucky Story (for Escapologist's Birthday,) "Illuminated Cities at the Center of Me"...is at least started. :)

 From my RBB, "Home is the Hunter":

“I’ll never work for SHIELD again,” Clint answered, picking at a splinter on the table. “Not in the same capacity, not in any situation where someone would have to trust me. There will be an investigation about Loki’s invasion. It’ll conclude that, brainwashed or not, I helped kill SHIELD agents and aided an enemy army. I will be given two alternatives: a quiet retirement, my silence and my pension, or a bullet to the head and a hole in the ground. I’d prefer to keep breathing, thanks, so from here, it’s retirement.”

 From my RBB story, "Home is the Hunter"

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One of SHIELD’s first actions, after they had retrieved him from the isolated cabin, was to install him in a small apartment in Brooklyn.  Even that had felt like the worst kind of manipulation---here you are Captain Rogers, here’s an empty apartment in a city you no longer recognize--- but at least he’d been allowed to live somewhere that wasn’t the SHIELD barracks or, worse, that cold and isolated cabin.

Steve hadn’t been born in the 1820s; he was well aware that SHIELD had an agenda. It was clear enough when they talked to him; they spoke of “Erskine’s great gift to the nation” and what it would mean to the country to have him alive and allied with SHIELD and all the “greater good” his presence represented…but Steve had been born at the beginning of one war and sacrificed himself to end another and he was done. He was also not nearly dumb enough to tell them so outright, not until he got his bearings in this strange new century.

 

(Slightly more than six sentences, from Chapter Nine, which is finally ALMOST DONE.)

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“I could have called you home,” T'Challa said in a tone that said he’d strongly considered it. “But Baba…he was so proud of the work you were doing. He would have wanted you to stay there.”

Nakia turned to quirk an eyebrow at him. “Your father… he did not want Wakanda openly involved in the outside world, not until the aid mission to Lagos.”

T’Challa acknowledged this; he’d attended the same council debates. “Yes. But… he was proud of what you were accomplishing. And he would have wanted you to stay and finish. So…I did not call you home.”

It would have been disastrous had he tried, Nakia knew. She and her team had had months tied up in the op---investigations, planning, false IDs and covers, all the logistics involved in breaking up one of the largest trafficking rings in Africa. Had he called her, she would have gone, and willingly, but…Nakia was suddenly glad he’d made the decision for her. “I understand,” she told him. “And it pleases me to think your father did as well.”