the_rck

Title: The Shadows of Their Names
Fandom: Lupin III
Rating: T
Length: 2130 words
Characters/Pairings: Arsene Lupin III, Zenigata Kouichi
Tags: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Tricksters, Mythology References, Broken Bones, Hints of Immortality, Magical Transformation, Non-Consensual Drug Use

Notes: I wrote this for a saved prompt, but that request was for ship fic, and this was determinedly gen. Also, it took a turn into weird AU.

Summary: Lupin's plans for this job hadn't included a busted ankle. Working around that wasn't going to be impossible, but it definitely increased the level of challenge.

He'd been expecting to be able to run. Now, he couldn't even walk, not without crutches which were... difficult to disguise.

And on the other side of that locked door. Somewhere. It was a big building. There were crutches somewhere. Or a wheelchair. He could manage with a wheelchair.

Story on AO3.

Title: Turn Your Faces to the Wind

Fandom: Recursive of "The Dragon-King's Temple" by Kryal which is a crossover of Avatar the Last Airbender and Stargate SG-1.

Rating: G
Length: 1913 words
Characters/Pairings: Aang, The Avatar Spirit
Tags: Kryal's The Dragon-King's Temple Universe, Introspection, Worldbuilding, Meditation, Recursive, Ignores Legend of Korra

Notes: Written for the 2021 Recursive Exchange which involved making a fanwork of a fanwork. The source text crosses early(ish) SG-1 with AtLA shortly after the ending of season 3.

Summary: When Aang meditated on the origins of the Avatar, he returned to the temple of the sthaanu to do so. That seemed appropriate to him because the sthaanu lay at the root of human history on their planet.

Also, he hoped that the location would give that past self the right cues to persuade them to talk to him. He knew they were still awake, at least a little, because he had felt them watching and listening as Jack and Daniel, the representatives from the Tau'ri, 'met' the Firelord for the first time.

Story on AO3.


Title: Tossing Mountains into the Sea
Fandom: Dreaming of Sunshine - Silver Queen
Rating: T
Length: 7205 words
Characters/Pairings: Haku, Momochi Zabuza, Haku's mother, Terumi Mei
Tags: Time Travel, Partial Amnesia, Canon Typical Violence, Murder of a Minor Character, References to Momochi Zabuza/Terumi Mei, Silver Queen's Dreaming of Sunshine Universe

Notes: Written for Fandom 5K 2021.

Summary: Nobody had a plan for 'what if I wake up a decade in the past and need to find my important people?' Right? It wasn't just Zabuza being careless. He'd never even heard legends about shit like this.

Story on AO3.

Title: (Each Leaf) Addressed to You
Fandom: Naruto
Rating: T
Length: 4280 words
Characters/Pairings: Tenten
Tags: Multiple Timelines; Time Travel Via Dreams; Physical Time Travel; Summons Realm; Nature Spirits; Mokuton; Referenced canonical character death; Referenced Neji/Tenten; PTSD; Grief/Mourning; Second Hokage Era

Notes: Written as a treat for vendettadays for Past Imperfect. I was assigned this, originally, but defaulted after getting the news about my mother. I wanted to give them a story anyway.

Summary: Tenten was just trying to get home. Now she's in the past and trying to figure out if she can-- or should-- change anything.

Of course, she kind of has already. It was an accident. Mostly. Next time, though, she wants it to be deliberate.

Story on AO3.

Title: Also in the Act of Reaching
Fandom: Teixcalaan Series - Arkady Martine
Rating: T
Length: 2166 words
Characters/Pairings: Mahit Dzmare, Three Seagrass, Yskander Aghavn
Tags: Friendship, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Reunions, Travel, Fish Out of Water

Notes: Written for Yuletide 2020.

Summary: When Three Seagrass arrived at Lsel Station, she was, officially at least, traveling as a private personage. She had missed Mahit and the possibilities they'd both chosen to turn away from. She also had-- would always have-- a gaping hole in her life where Petal had once been.

It was simply that, left on her own, Three Seagrass wouldn't have let either absence drag her to the ass-end of beyond.

Story on AO3.



( Fics posted in 2020 (no links or summaries) )

Year total words: 115404
35 stories

I didn't track words written this year, so my word count might be higher. Then again, I counted words written before the start of 2020 if I didn't post them before that.

Title: Black Diamonds and Helium
Fandom: Sky High (2005)
Rating: T
Length: 2316 words
Characters/Pairings: Josie Stronghold, Warren's Mother, Layla's Father
Tags: Parenthood, Grief/Mourning, Past Betrayal, Strained Marriages, Friendship, Referenced Warren/Will/Layla, Choices

Notes: Part 2 of To Us a Thorn, To Them a Rose. I started this for Writing Rainbow: Black but didn't finish it until last week. This story won't make sense without the context from All the Faces We Were but should work moderately well even with out having read part 1 of this series.

Summary: Josie just hadn't expected to see Laurel Peace in Starbucks. If Josie was honest, she hadn't expected to see Laurel anywhere at all. Josie would have put money on Laurel living with Warren and Layla and Will.

But Will had never once specifically said that Laurel was there. He'd mildly implied it, but he'd never said it.

Josie probably needed to start paying attention to Will's phrasing. She read his smuggled letters over and over and had questioned a lot of what was in them, but she hadn't questioned this.

Story on AO3.



Title: Every Stop a New Departure
Fandom: Weiss Kreuz
Rating: M
Length: 10618 words
Characters/Pairings: Fujimiya "Aya" Ran, Tsukiyono Omi | Takatori Mamoru, Hidaka Ken, Sakaki Ouka, Kudo Yohji, Schuldig

Tags: Alternate Universe (canon divergence, different first meeting, different backstory for some characters), Canon-Typical Violence, PTSD, Dysfunctional Family, Siblings, Stalking, Threat of Sexual Assault, Kidnapping

Notes: Written for Heart Attack 2020 (10K word minimum, two weeks to write). Includes setting consistent levels of homophobia. Also includes Schuldig being the creepiest creeper ever to creep.

Summary: In which Mamoru's mother has a backbone and knows how to manage a corporate (and criminal empire). Poor Reiji. Everyone told him not to take his boat out that day. His wife, brother, and teenage son all say so.

From Mamoru's point of view, all of this is both better and worse than canon. Things change for some other people and not for others.

Twenty or so years later, Fujimiya Ran is in the wrong place at the wrong time and gets rescued by (and then kidnapped by) a quartet of armed men with cat breed code names.

Story on AO3.

( Information about an MCU story containing explicit non-con )

_________________

I want to write another ten stories by the end of the year, but I don't know if it will happen. I have one assignment and will definitely write something for Yuletide. Beyond that... I'm not sure what will happen.

Three recently revealed exchange fics:

Title: Daylight After the Day
Fandom: Dreaming of Sunshine - Silver Queen
Rating: G
Length: 1410 words
Characters/Pairings: Sarutobi Asuma, Nara Shikako
Tags: Fire Temple arc, religious speculation, misinterpreting the data

Notes: I wrote this for the 2020A Dreaming of Sunshine exchange.

Summary: Officially, technically, Asuma had never been read in on the ferret retrieval mission. Unofficially... Tsunade-sama had concerns about long term repercussions and had no one else sworn to her who had a better grasp of the religious side of things. Jiraiya understood the chakra side of religion, but that wasn't the same thing, merely close enough to be dangerous

Story on AO3.


Title: There Will Be Dawn
Fandom: Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
Rating: T
Length: 1591 words
Characters/Pairings: Uraraka Ochako
Tags: Bad Decisions, Good Intentions, Superpowers, Time Travel, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Moral Ambiguity, Planning Murder, Planning Kidnapping, Alternate Universe - Apocalypse

Notes: Written for the September 2020 We Die Like Fen flash exchange.

Summary: Ochako should never have agreed to this. The fact that it might work wouldn't ever make it a good idea. Functional, yes. Effective, possibly.

Morally good, by no measure Ochako could name.

Except... Ochako wouldn't be here if they hadn't all agreed it was the only way. They'd all even agreed that Ochako would have to be the one to go. She wasn't the best at any of the things that needed doing, but she was competent enough at most of them, at all of the ones that needed doing immediately.

Story on AO3.


Title: Which Has Lain with Roses
Fandom: Utena
Rating: T
Length: 1103 words
Characters/Pairings: Himemiya Anthy/Tenjou Utena

Tags: Post-canon, Anthy POV, Lucid Dreaming, Questing, Introspection, Witches, Goddesses, Memories, Holding Onto Hope

Notes: Written for the September 2020 We Die Like Fen flash exchange.

Summary: Anthy dreams about Utena every night. That's a choice Anthy makes over and over and over. It's a better choice than the ones she made over and over and over for her brother.

Story on AO3.

I wrote five stories as treats for Battleship Ex.

Title: That Bless and Burn
Fandom: Chronicles of Amber/Roman History RPF
Rating: T
Length: 679 words
Characters/Pairings: Florimel, Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus | Emperor Augustus/Livia Drusilla
Tags: Epistolary, Marriage, Backstory, Angst, Mentor-Protege relationship, Be Careful What You Wish For, Curses, Mixed Blessings

Notes: For purposes of this story, I assumed that Flora's mother, Dybele, came from Shadow Earth.

Summary: I am not faithless to my promises. I remember you as an apt student and an amusing companion. I have much more that I could teach you, and you would have choices not available to a Roman matron.

The villages hereabouts name me a goddess. There can be no shame in joining a goddess's household. No matter what your mother may have said.

Story on AO3.


Title: With Movement and No Shades of Despair
Fandom: Naruto
Rating: T
Length: 5572 words
Characters/Pairings: Sai, Hatake Kakashi, Namikaze Minato, Pakku
Tags: Time Travel, Rescue, Loyalty, Angst, Time Travel Fix-It, Memory Loss, Unreliable Narrator

Notes: Sai has to do some doublethink in this as he works around his conditioning. There will be contradictions in his thoughts.

Summary: Wait. Sai closed his eyes and considered.

As long as this might be a genjutsu, he couldn't report to Danzo-sama without risking operational security and without revealing Root secrets to whatever enemy had ensnared him. That... That made sense. Sai could work with that. It gave him parameters and deniability.

If it was a genjutsu, Sai could explore it to see what the enemy knew. Sai could approach compromised agents to test boundaries. Sai could--

Now, the only question Sai really had was whether or not his brother was still alive.

Story on AO3.


Title: Leaving Fire in Her Wake
Fandom: Dreaming of Sunshine
Rating: T
Length: 956 words
Characters/Pairings: Sai, Hatake Kakashi
Tags: Loyalty, Assassination Attempt(s), Obsession, Protectiveness

Notes: I was trying to write Sai interacting with Shikako, but this happened instead. Shikako's effect on Sai is rather different than Naruto's canonical effect.

Summary: So far, none of the assassins had come from Root. Sai was unreasonably grateful for that fact. Nothing would break his loyalty to Shikako, but she would be very unhappy if Danzo killed him.

She'd probably be even more unhappy if Sai emulated Uchiha Itachi, He still would because alive and unhappy was much better than dead.

And dead would be better than anything Danzo might do to her if he actually ever saw what she was.

Story on AO3.


Title: Faithful to this Moment
Fandom: MCU
Rating: T
Length: 1712 words
Characters/Pairings: Loki/Stephen Strange
Tags: Time Travel, First Kiss, Alcohol, Grief/Mourning, Established Relationship, Getting Together, Fishing for Minnows, Catching a Whale

Notes: I expected this one to be more straightforward than it ended up being, but it all made more sense if the relationship was happening in a different chronological order for each party.

Summary: He signaled the bartender. When the woman arrived, Stephen said, "Absinthe, undiluted, for the charismatic gentleman over there." He twitched a finger to indicate Loki and the half dozen beings vying for his attention.

The bartender gave Stephen a sharp look. "He won't drink it."

Stephen smiled. "But he will recognize it."

Queen Frigga brewed absinthe. She served it to the entire court once a year.

Story on AO3.


( Cut for NSFW tags and for non-con )

I had fics in two exchanges that revealed authors over the weekend. One story was a pinch hit; the other was a treat.

Title: As Blood Is to Stars
Fandom: Babylon 5
Rating: T
Length: 7394 words
Characters/Pairings: Alfred Bester/Michael Garibaldi

Tags: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Before Earth-Minbari War, Europa, Background Casefic, Undercover Missions, First Kiss, Age Difference, Telepathy, Neighbors to Friends, Friends to Allies, Allies to...?

Notes: I wrote this as a pinch hit for Fandom 5K. I considered the pairing a challenge because I'm not convinced that a happy version of it is possible in the canon timeline. I thought that I needed Bester in a situation where he wasn't playing up how threatening he could be and that I needed Garibaldi younger and less established in his prejudice against telepaths.

Summary: Michael didn't like telepaths, but he wasn't the sort of asshole to deny a man garlic. He smiled. "It makes a lot of things taste better," he said. "The way it works is there're a couple of families who grow small stuff, seasonings. Peppers are too big, but they got garlic and chives and rosemary and--" He waved a hand to indicate an et cetera. "By introduction only. I've got a standing order. My buddy, Frank, introduced me." He studied Alfred's face for a moment then added, "The food here really needs it. C'mon."

Acting grateful for the favor wasn't even hard because Alfred was definitely looking forward to buying garlic. The odor of it sauteing in the next apartment over had made him crave it.

The story on AO3.

( Nonconathon story information behind the cut. Weiss Kreuz )