delkios:

Because I don’t want to write depressing stuff tonight, I’m going to repost depressing stuff instead.  Sense.  I has it.
—-

Rating: R for sexual situations and implicit voyeurism
Word Count: 687
Characters: the Director, Carolina, York
Summary: Sometimes it was difficult for the Director to see them together.

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This is absolutely everything I just said I wanted in the last post concerning both York/Carolina AND Director/Carolina and it’s beautiful and amazing and hurts in all the right ways and how did I miss this???

AJ, you wonderful internet wife, I knew I could count on you to deliver something amazingly awesome. Ugh, this just pulled at all the right heartstrings and I love the constant comparison and the jealousy and yeah. YEAH. <3

mumblybee:

I’M SORRY THIS IS SO LATE OH NOOOOOOO HERE I HOPE YOU LIKE IT ANYWAY

IT IS EXTREMELY FLUFFY I HOPE THAT IS OKAY

————

York + Carolina + Coffee + Hogwarts AU 

~a birthday fic for Ree~

          

            “Welcome to the Hufflepuff coffee lounge,” said York smoothly, one hand at her back and the other making a wide arc across the common room. Carolina stepped forward, looking around for signs of life, but there didn’t seem to be any Hufflepuffs lounging about the way the Gryffindors tended to do in their tower. It certainly looked comfortable enough for lounging – the room was circular and cozy, with plush yellow-and-black couches and an overall sunny atmosphere (literally, and to the point that Carolina wondered if there was some sort of charm cast on the room to keep it so perfectly sunlit).

            “Your coffee lounge doesn’t seem very popular,” Carolina told York, turning back to find him smiling proudly at her. He was dressed in just the half-untucked button down shirt and slacks, his black and yellow tie hanging loosely around his neck. This combined with his ruffled hair and slightly manic smile made him look, Carolina thought, like he’d just returned from a high speed police chase.

            “I got everybody to clear out,” York told her. “Gave ’em some fireworks so they could put on a show out by the lake.”

            Carolina raised her eyebrows. “That seems likely to result in your imminent detention,” she decided.

            York shrugged. “Yeah, Professor Sprout told me I’m the only Hufflepuff to ever get this many detentions in my first year,” he said happily. Of course he was happy. He took pride in his pranks. “So, you want some coffee?”

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THINGS I LOVE INCLUDES THIS RIGHT HERE.

Man, I thought I reblogged this when I liked it a few days ago I’M SORRY BUT IT’S STILL ALWAYS RELEVANT AND OH MY GOD. YES. GOOD.

York/Carolina/coffee is best. Huffleyork/Griffinlina/coffee is somehow even better.

This fic gives me all the happy feelings and smiles. Thank you <3

mumblybee:

reeberry

Did you move or delete that Carolina Rated D for Depressing story I loved so much but hadn’t gotten to reblogging yet? D:

I deleted it because I decided I was unhappy with it, but here, I’ll repost. (And thanks.)

———————

In her nightmares she sees all of them, even before Wash details to her the methods of their deaths. Her imagination had done the job well enough before, and now that she knows the facts, it only has to embellish. Add the sweat beading on North’s brow as he lies there with his blood draining away. The defiant expression (so familiar, so familiar) on South’s face – South, who never could keep her mouth shut until that bullet entered her brain. (And how to reconcile this with the South who shared her breakfasts with North in the mess hall, who gave him half her eggs simply because he liked them?)

            She sees Maine, or what’s left of him, trudging along in a decomposing shell of a body, with each step forgetting everything he ever wanted or feared or loved.

            But most often in her nightmares she finds York. Unarmored, always, so she can see in excruciating detail the two small wounds torn into his upper left side, the thick streams of blood flowing so fast from his body. The light, quivering breaths that turn to coughs – and in her dreaming there is no Delta to guard him, to ease away the pain as he dies. There is only York, gasping until he’s choking on the blood that spills from his mouth, his good eye searching and finding her and pleading.

            On these nights she wakes up sharp and shaking, tears stinging at her eyes. She reminds herself that it didn’t happen that way. Delta was there, she tells herself. Delta was there. It becomes a strange singsong refrain in her head and she curls up with the pillow curved around her ears, trying to block it out. Sometimes it works. But tonight the mantra continues, and morphs.

            Delta was there. Delta was there. York was there. York was there but he isn’t anymore. York was there but now he’s dead. York is dead. It’s my fault. York is dead. They’re all dead. It’s my fault. It’s my fault. I’m not dead. It’s my fault.

            She shoves the corner of the pillow into her mouth to muffle a scream; a long, silent scream that shudders up through her spine to her ribs to the knuckles of her clenched fists.

            When Wash asks, come morning, if she’s feeling all right, it is with the wearied gaze she has seen on her own face in the mirror.

            She wants to ask him whose death he dreams. Does he watch CT take her last breaths, or perhaps come across her decomposing in the desert sand over and over? Or is it Epsilon’s loved ones who suffer and die before his eyes? Does he watch himself in dreams, forced to replay every cruel act he’s ever committed, every halfway innocent life he’s taken with a measured aim of his gun? Does he fight like she does to contain the screaming, or is he silent after all these years?

            Instead she tells him, “I’m fine.” Because she is now. As long as she stays awake.

            He doesn’t press it. So she doesn’t press him. And they continue like that, reliving their own private terrors each night. They never acknowledge it. But sometimes when she wakes, Carolina hears Wash already pacing the floor of his room, already shaken from his rest.

            Somehow, it’s comforting.

Now that it’s rebloggable, I will do just that!

Man, I love every idea in this, and how they’re presented, and you should write more D-rated Carolina and Wash interactions plzkthxbai.

mumblybee:

So, a group of friends and I have created a new tumblr designed to help out the entirety of the creative world. Ambitious? Yes. Awesome? Also yes. In fact, the name of the blog is Awesome Inspiring Shit, and here’s our mission statement:

We’re just a bunch of creative-minded people who’ve noticed that there’s all too often a lack of positive support for all you writers and artists out there. We figured everybody could use a bit of encouragement now and then to keep following their passion, whether it’s writing, painting, video editing, or macaroni sculpting. Creative work is hard work, and all too often, it’s lonely work. But it doesn’t have to be that way. And so we invite you to join us by participating in our daily prompts, not only to help yourself but also to help your fellow writers/artists/macaroni sculptors in their quest to be the very best. The best there ever was.

Not to mention all of our planned prompts and challenges and submissions and motivational quotes! For more info, go to our about page, and please follow us! The fate of the entire creative world depends on you.

And me.

All of us, really.

That’s sorta the point.

THIS IS AWESOME.

Yes good I love you guys have I mentioned that because I do <3

redvsbluequotes:

‘Did the simulation complete?’
‘Yes, Director.’
‘How did he perform?’
‘Total failure, all objectives.’
‘Good. …Run it again.’

-Myshu

▲▼■▼▲

Αλφα

(via havefuncarolina)

mumblybee:

Chapter One of the Red vs Blue Hogwarts AU is finally up on AO3!

http://archiveofourown.org/works/407643

This mostly just establishes (my extremely convoluted and ridiculous) backstory. Next chapter is the Sorting and all that fun stuff. =D

yesyesyesyesyesyesyeysyesyesyesYES

this crossover is full of win. and everything I wish my brain could be.

I love York in this SO MUCH. So, so much!

York gives everyone nicknames is also a thing I am always a fan of. Always <3

queen-of-france:

Sargeant Mia Badouin doesn’t know war.

She was born three years after. The world around her healed as she grew - a new paving stone was laid for every step she took, the dead were buried to clear the way for her. When she was old enough to understand, the war was long pressed into memorial plaques; three hundred thousand dead smelted into brass Nike on Central Square.

They told her about blood, honor, loss, like it was a legend. A bullet in the back of his head. A shard of icy mirror in your eye. It was so far away, so long ago, stories of people who betrayed their loved ones for a piece of bread, of bright, promising students used as cannon fodder, of pleas for mercy cut with a bayonet. People don’t tell her the truth.

But she feels it.

When Mia closes her eyes, she can imagine her calm, sunny Capital at war. She’s read enough, seeked enough. People died in the canals below her feet; people were killed on the street she lives on. And they could so easily start dying again, start betraying and losing and sacrificing all over.

She enlisted on the same day she received her high school diploma.

Sargeant Mia Badouin doesn’t know war, but she’s ready for it.

This is beautiful.

I love the concept, because war is so fascinating, and I love characters like this, who never experience it but know enough to dread it, to be ready for it.

I want to know more. Really, really want to know more.

mumblybee:

[Response to a prompt from reeberry, given…months ago, probably.

reeberry asked you:

Lyric prompt! “now cinderella don’t you go to sleep/it’s such a bitter form of refuge/ah don’t you know the kingdom’s under siege/and everybody needs you” for Carolina dealing (or, as the case may be, not dealing) with her AIs. :) *encourages sad fics yes* ]

            “Carolina,” York said, skidding barefooted into the armor processing center just as she was taking off her helmet. “Are you all right? I mean, what I mean is – have you been all right?”

            She turned to stare at him, bright red bangs matted to her forehead with sweat, her eyes flat. York almost winced at the silence that followed. He’d been meaning to ask her for a while, ever since the implantation. It had taken him a while to get up the courage, especially with Delta in his head calculating the likelihood of interpersonal conflict that would result from such inquiry. (Turned out it was 94.63%.)

            “I’m fine,” Carolina said at last, heading for the door and shoving him aside with one of her patented shoulder bumps, which normally he didn’t mind, even though it kinda really hurt when the shoulder-bumper was still wearing armor and the shoulder-bumpee was not. Because the shoulder-bumpee may have just possibly forgotten that he’d meant to crash Carolina’s morning training that day and may have – theoretically speaking – just rolled out of bed in his Superman pajamas in order to catch her before she left and holed herself up in her room again.

            Which she was now in the process of doing. Leaving, that was.

            “Recent evidence suggests otherwise,” York called after her quickly, rubbing at his sore shoulder. Carolina half-turned, eyebrows raised.

            “I’m sorry?”

            York nodded. “Recent evidence,” he repeated, a little bit cautiously, and then suddenly the words tumbled out in this cool, empty tone of voice that didn’t seem to quite belong to him. “A propensity for forgetfulness, for example, is one peculiarity in your recent behavior which may – which may signify – signif…fy…um.”

            And then he stopped talking because all of the sudden his good eye blurred out and went hazy-green at the edges and Delta said I apologize and York’s head hurt like someone was slamming his brain repeatedly against his skull. So he sat down abruptly on the cold metal floor.

            There was a scrape of armor-on-metal that he might’ve imagined. York blinked long and slow until the vision in his right eye started to clear, and when it did he saw Carolina kneeling at his side, staring critically back at him.

            “Are you sick?” she asked.

            “Is this how it is for you?” York replied, bracing himself against the wall in order to scramble back up to his feet. She rose with him, her face growing stony again.

            “What are you talking about?”

            “Shit,” York muttered, because his head still hurt and because Delta was on a loop of internal-apologizing and because she was avoiding the question exactly as he’d known she would. “You know what I mean. The AI. Do they…blur over like that for you? Is that why you keep forgetting shit and –”

            “I’m not forgetting anything,” Carolina interrupted sharply.

            “Look, I don’t wanna alarm you or anything, but in case you haven’t noticed, you’re leaving the armor processing center with your armor still on,” York replied.

            Carolina blinked at him, tightened her grip on her helmet. “I’m coming back. I’m not done training.”

            “Right. Yeah. And yet you’re not on the schedule for the next training block because…? Come on, Carolina, don’t – don’t –” York stopped, distracted by the monologue in his head. “Delta for the love of god stop apologizing everything is fine,” he growled, digging his fingers into his hair.

             “I don’t think I’m the one with the AI problem,” Carolina said quietly.

            York struggled to look at her through the greenish haze that kept filtering in and out. “I heard you talking to them the other night,” he said.

            Carolina’s lips curved into a scowl. York went on heedlessly. “You were telling them to stop, please, just shut up, because you just wanted to go to sleep –”

            “York. That’s enough.”

            He shook his head very quickly and that hurt but everything hurt so too fucking bad for him, really. “No, no, it’s not enough. It’s not. You’re not telling me the truth anymore. And that’s not enough. It’s just not. Because I actually, y’know, care about you, okay. And if I can help you then I will, all you gotta do is say when and I will, d’you understand me?”

            And for a moment she looked at him a little softer than before, her eyes a little more right, a little more real. She looked like Carolina again, just for that small flickering moment, and York wanted to hold her there and never let her change ever again.

            But then it faded, and right away he forgot he’d had any kind of hope like that at all.

            “Please,” he said, because he was tired, and because there wasn’t much else left.

            Carolina considered him with an unfamiliar dispassion. “You should get some rest, York,” she said coolly. “You’ll feel better.”

            She turned from him and he watched her walk away, still armored.

Man. That… my heart is in an incalculable number of pieces now.

I love how Delta takes over for York when he can’t really explain it, how Carolina shrugs off her problems by pointing out that York isn’t doing so well either, how she looks at him with “unfamiliar dispassion”, just….everything.

I mean, I didn’t really expect happy and funny from a prompt like that. But you managed to add some of that in, and then turn it and really get to the heart of, well. Of me.

Thank you <3

completelysane:

reeberry:

completelysane:

reeberry:

completelysane:

reeberry:

completelysane:

reeberry asked you:

Church never got the hang of possessing someone and looking through their memories. It was always high pressure situations of on the spot jumping into someone else’s skin, intense focus, and no time to wonder about their name or their family back home or when their first kiss was. But when he jumped into Wash, in those last few minutes, the Freelancer’s memories opened up like a book. It could have been force of habit, but Church got the feeling that Wash was *showing* him, like a proud child.

Connecticut wasn’t a surprise, really, although the vividness of the memories coupled with Wash’s uncaring affect was. Church thought ‘this guy actually got a girl once?’ and ‘naming them all after states was the hokiest thing that old man ever thought of but it does have a ring to it’, and ‘dude, it’s crowded in here’. Wash’s mind seemed to shift. Never a stable landscape, it showed pictures and feelings that almost overwhelmed Church. Maybe this was why Wash was so OCD on the surface. But there was also that pride in his mental landscape, a straight-shouldered kind of demand to be heard.

All Church said was, “You know I can see why you didn’t want anyone else in your head. Got some pretty heavy stuff going on there.”

“Don’t touch anything,” Wash said firmly.

“Finally got the place how you like it, huh?” Church said, the new experience still grating. Through the waves under his feet came the waves of memories, bombarding his mind, glowing fondly as they showed the other agents, his friends. Glowing fondly with happy images, vivid memories, instances Wash cherished to keep for himself.

Next came the wave of feelings associated with the scenes. If Church still had a body, he would have staggered back at the sudden dump. It had been like that since he came through, but, still, every time it caught him by surprise. Under that current of apathy Wash had built up lay a carefully laid out web of vibrant emotion, probably inaccessible even to Wash’s conscious mind. It was there for a second, long enough to wind the breath Church didn’t need or shouldn’t have been holding out of his body, and it was gone again, just as quickly, just as violently.

He supposed it was normal for the agent to give himself so completely to any mental intruder. A reaction hammered into him by the Director, a habit he never had to break because he never thought it’d come up again. (Or maybe it was a remnant of a defeat, a lack of fighting in a battle that Church wasn’t even aware of, despite being the attacker.)

“Something like that,” Wash said.

Epsilon wasn’t here any more, although part of Church instinctively looked for him. The memory unit had left scars, as visible to Church in this mental space as if someone had scarred Wash’s face in the real world. Church didn’t want to examine those further. First of all it was boring. Dead memories were dead. Second of all, though, Epsilon now was only something dark and rotten and scabbed over. A ghost of a ghost. It was hard enough for the living to deal with that, but in the mental space, Church could have been lost in it.

So he controlled it instead, took stock of himself, and kept talking. “You’ve got all of this in here because of me?”

“Not because of you.” It’s hard to tell what someone’s movements are when Church isn’t actively trying to possess them, but that straight-shoulder impression gets more foreceful. Wash is walking out of the vehicle bay. “Because of the Director.”

“Yeah, but, he’s me. Or he was, anyway.” Church’s mechanical voice is almost sarcastic. “He put Epsilon inside your head, and we’re meeting up with him to…get Epsilon, or something? I get a little confused when nobody’s talking about me.”

“We’re going to kill the Meta.” Wash is jogging now. “Do you really want to take credit for what went on inside my head?”

Church doesn’t answer that. Instead, he says, “So, if I’m the Alpha - which I am still not sure about, by the way - shouldn’t I have some sort of magic ghost power over the other AI?”

“They want you,” Wash said. “That doesn’t necessarily mean that you have any power.”

Church cackled. “Doesn’t necessarily mean - yes it does! They want me. I’m like the messiah to their enslaved peoples, the freaking moth to their flame.”

Wash paused to think about this, the idea that his passenger was a messiah, paused to reflect how utterly sad it all was, and was promptly reminded of the lack of privacy in his own head at the moment.

“Hey, I’d make a fucking good messiah,” Church said defensively.

“They should all be thankful your holy weapon can’t possibly be a gun,” the agent said with a forced smile, a forced joke, a forced lightness to the situation to distract him from the fact that Church was in his head, that someone else was hearing his thoughts, that privacy was once again long gone, and yet more secrets had taken its place.

“It’s a sniper rifle,” Church said, crossing his arms in Wash’s head with such gusto that Wash slowed down his running and almost repeated the gesture. “Oh, fuck you too, buddy.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Wash said defensively, picking up speed again.

“You didn’t have to, I felt it, man! Your entire mind rang with laughing and disbelief.” He said this and Wash could hear the childish pout, so out of place with the memory of the last time this voice had been in his head. “I can hear it, you know.”

“I know.”

“Can’t we turn it off or something? Can’t I just be a quiet passenger and not have a first class pass to your…you?”

“Sure, Alpha. You start being quiet, we’ll call that step one.”

Church looked around as he became aware of the tiny amount of glee giving this snarky command inspired in Wash. “It’s Church.”

“Right.”

“Don’t just fucking ‘right’ me, man, it’s my name.” Church was starting to get used to the sensation of being a passenger, or invader, or whatever he’d qualify himself as. Intruder. That’s what Wash’s mind supplied, easily, and Church realized he also wasn’t alone in his brain. It made his not-technically-existent neck itch. “I call you Wash.”

“David,” Wash supplied in a flash of insight about name association and it suddenly became very important for Church to call him David where Epislon and the Director himself had always called him Agent Washington, where all his old friends always called him Wash.

“Fine, David, but don’t you start calling me ‘Leonard’.”

“I’d rather not repeat that name anyway.”

“Right, right, because that the Director. And we’re going to kill him, or something?”

“Maybe.”

“Don’t sound so confidant. I can tell what you’re thinking, remember? You want order because chaos is freaking scary to you.”

“What I’m scared of doesn’t matter.” Wash pulls his rifle a little bit closer to his chest, but that might be more because they’re nearing the round-topped buildings that are their destination than because of any emotional distress. Church can’t quite tell. There’s a difference between reading someone’s mind and reading their thoughts. Personal history was easy, especially when Wash opened up like he had, like somebody proudly showing off battle scars. But the pride had been a quick reaction that was almost gone now that Church had threatened to make the scars worse. Church was feeling disorientation again, like when he’d possessed Lopez and not been able to understand the words coming out of his own mouth.

In Church fashion, though, he said, “So I’m right.”

Wash’s voice was very flat. “I thought you could tell what’s in my head. Don’t you know whether or not you’re right?”

“I’m pretty sure. But it isn’t exactly a road map in here. Did Epsilon cause all this mess, or is it just you?”

Wash said, “I don’t know.” He had slowed his pace but the building was still getting closer anyway. Church thought about the EMP that they had come here to activate. He was going to die for this war. Again.

“So I’m going to die for a cause neither of us understand. Great.”

Then the pride came back. For a moment Wash showed him, with a practiced sort of mental shrug, the Freelancers lining up in front of a glowing blue board.

“No,” Wash said. “I think you understand it perfectly.”

“I don’t really have your motivation, man. It’s not like I can relate to you guys,” Church said with a frown, and he felt Wash smile. “What?”

“Motivation,” Wash echoed.

“Oh, right, I’m the Alpha, so my motivation got stripped away and now it’s fucking Kilo or something, blah-de-fucking-blah.”

“Kilo isn’t a Greek letter.”

“So sue me, my knowledge of Greek must’ve been sliced away too,” Church spat back hastily. “Look, all I’m asking for is a cause, all right? Isn’t that what people go into battle for? How hard can it be to find one I’ll get?”

“I gave you a cause,” Wash said easily, his memories still streaming the project, the scoreboards, the Freelancers themselves.

“You gave me your cause. Don’t you think I should get one of my own, if we’re going to do this?” Wash stopped walking. “What, what’s happening?”

“How many times have you died, Church?” His brain patterns were changing again, lighting up and moving and Church thought he’d get used to it, he got used to being in people’s heads after a while, but Wash was too…too intense for that. Maybe because Wash knew he was there, but it was like every time Church started to get settled, everything had to go and change on him.

For one brief, hilarious moment, he actually thought about counting. “Does ‘too many’ count as an answer?”

“And what if this is the last one?” Wash said this carefully, tentatively, as if to ease Church into the idea. As if to ease Church into it now, after spending the last ten minutes insisting that he was Alpha, that he was an AI, that the EMP would kill him. “Your last death?”

“Well,” Church said with a smile. “At least it won’t be Caboose this time.”

This got a chuckle out of his host as Wash began walking again.

“It doesn’t sound like it bothers you much.”

“Dying? Yeah, I dunno. It’s a complicated emotion. Have you heard of those, David?”
With another surge of pride, Wash showed him. People paraded past their mind’s eye, masked faces and bare ones going up in flames. Alpha felt what he had done as Sigma and Epsilon. He saw patched and cracked walls Wash had built to try to keep Epsilon out. Because he was Alpha he felt the way they had wanted him. Because he was Private Church of the Blue Army he didn’t particularly care. Their want was irrelevant to him except in that it would distract the Meta from Tex. He only knew what Wash had told him about the torture that had split the AI, and because his memory was gone or because he was Dr. Leonard Church, he did not regret them.

Wash did, and he threw every face and name and color he had at Church to get him to understand that. That’s where the pride had come from, in a old self-induced urge for Wash to remember his own humanity. Beneath all the stoicism he was proud of surviving Epsilon, and by extension, Alpha. Although Wash had never wanted to host an AI again, now he knew he could handle one.

Church said, “I guess you do have some pretty complex stuff up here. And boy do I disgust you. That doesn’t seem like a good start for a working relationship, eh, buddy?”

They were nearing the outpost now. Armed guards started to show up as red marks on Wash’s HUD and glimmers of thought in Church’s perception. He supposed he was really reading the presence of standard neural implants, but he had always just thought of them as people. Wash moved faster and warier.

“You don’t disgust me,” Wash said lightly, “but this whole trip isn’t exactly my ideal vacation. Shut up.” He still sounded friendly. His mental landscape didn’t give any clues to his feelings, but Church was reminded of the way Wash talked down to Caboose. “The fact that it was me who ended up here instead of any other Freelancer doesn’t matter. I have to transport you, and yo have to find a reason to…” he chuckled. “to die, I guess.”

“I told you my motive. You told it to me. I’ve got to get Tex back. Or get close to her, or save her, or something. I don’t know. Are you gonna help me with dying for that?”

“Yes. Because the cycle needs to stop.”

“The cycle of me looking for her? Fat chance.”

“The cycle of you not finding her and not being okay with that.” Wash shrugged.

Church could feel the shrug-generating thoughts in a sort of ghostly double of the physical movement. He had to resist agreeing with them. “I don’t think me dying is going to save her from anything.”

“Finding the Meta gets us one step closer.”

“Yeah. And I guess that’s all we can hope for sometimes, right?”

Wash refused to wax poetical. “If you say so.”

“Yeah, I do. If you can’t be assured of success you better arrange for some ass-kicking and hope,” Church said, and he settled down to wait.

<3 <3 <3

I would love to leave it at that fantastic line :D yaaaaaay round robin!

This was entirely too much fun, seriously <3

completelysane:

reeberry asked you:

Sandtrap AU! *drowns you in prompts* “and now we pass just like glass / i see through you and you see through me like i’m not there / you could make my head swerve / used to know my every curve / and now we meet on a street / and i’m blind. i cannot find the heart i gave to you”

The desert got into her head. It made her forget some times that there were green things in the world, or that the sun could be kind to pale, protected skin. Sand trickled into vulnerable synapses and then everything seemed distant and half-real like a mirage. She had tried to fight past the done-dry and the dark-and-cold and maybe dig some sand out of her head but by that time the desert was in her heart too.

CT turned over onto the sharp edge of her shoulder armor and looked across the hallway at Wash. She had been waiting for him to speak, but someone needed to now. Everyone else was asleep, and talking was easier when they weren’t alone.

She said, “Are you just going to stay quiet all night?”

He stared at the cave ceiling. “Yes. That’s called sleeping.”

“Shut up, Wash. We’re not going to wake up the blue guy. Talk.”

“I don’t need to.”

So they weren’t going to make a ritual out of this. They weren’t going to find themselves revealing weakness in the dark again. She said, “Fine.”

He didn’t let her think she had won. “You always got like this so easily.”

“Like what?” She accused right back.

He was laying on his back with his hands crossed over his gray chest as if in preparation for burial. Doc, Tucker, and the Meta were another almost-square further down the hallway. “You’re being snide, CT.” You get snide when you care, is that it? he had said to her once. “You don’t need to be any more. You made your grand statement and left the Freelancer program before the rest of us, and look where it got us now.”

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oh my gooood

I love everything that is this Sandtrap AU and and and and

everything that you touch and

“You get snide when you care, is that it?”

and

and just the end

when what he says and it hurts her in such a way and and and and

;A;

completelysane:

reeberry asked: “Be afraid of the lame, they’ll inherit your legs / Be afraid of the old, they’ll inherit your souls / Be afraid of the cold, they’ll inherit your blood / Apres moi, le deluge, after me comes the flood” For/About the Director, as seen from the freelancers? Or just CT or something, this part just really reminded me of him, the Director, and I’d love to see where you take it :)

It’s like living history.

The Director watches the Freelancers walk off into the sunset (metaphorically). It’s really just a nearby sun shining off the edge of the dropship, plus the running lights on the roof of the hanger, but he can picture the sun going down over scrub and campfires lighting the backs of their legs. They are the best and the most desperate of the gold-seekers, looking for a metal that is precious because it is rare, and they will discover a new country.

He speaks to the Counselor, standing on a ledge well away from the splash zone of the dropship’s engines. “If this were five hundred years ago we would be explorers, Counselor. We would be out in the frontiers. But then, as in any other period of history, there are always people who have to stay behind.”

“Do you envy them, Director?” The Counselor’s voice was quiet.

The Director turns, raising the back of his hand to his face for a moment to block out the glare of the sun. “What were you assigned to me for, Counselor?”

The other man’s blank aspect does not change. “To confirm compliance with UNSC codes of conduct.”

“Therefore,” said the Director, “you arenotauthorized to comment on my personal stake in this, or any other matter.”

The ship slipped out of the striped energy lock like a bird on the wind.

Leonard Church said, “Maybe I fear that their kind will replace me. Men of action are successful in wartime. Men of the mind wait. We develop things that other people use. But we survive, Counselor. We endure. The West gets won.”

Holy shit this is way better than even the amazingness I was expecting!

I just, oh man.

So many great visuals.

And the Director and and and and and

and yes.

and thank you.

and holy shit.

completelysane:

I keep finding old fics in my big word document o’ RvB. Someone yell at me if I’ve posted this already.

    One day, they made the mistake of giving him a comic book.

  There had been a whole pile of them, sitting on the thin-legged brown table in the middle of the common area for crazy soldiers. Wash didn’t want to look at them. He sat where he usually did, in a blue chair near the window, rifling his fingers through his hair or around the criss-cross pattern of scars at the back of his neck. Sometimes he had to remind himself that he was still here.

    But then an aid came over and handed him a floppy bundle of papers in the shape of a comic. “Hello David. Would you like to read?”

    Wash took the book. Might as well look at it, right? He was used to taking the things people handed him: confidentiality forms, trays of food, pills. The paper slid in his fingers. At first he just recognized colors, blurry blue and red made up of big dots the size of the targeting reticle on a sniper rifle. Then he saw the words.

    (These aren’t Epsilon memories, they’re just…they’re so strong, the image of North setting his comics down on the table or York reading in the common room in the middle of the night, his feet up by the coffee machine.)

    Wash said, “No.”

    The aid retreated right away, leaving the book in Wash’s hands. “All right, David. Would you prefer something else?”

    “No.”

    Wash lunged.

    He punched, grabbed, hooked one arm around to snap the aide’s thin elbow and then there were security guys on him, pulling at his shoulders. He whipped his head back and cracked his skull against someone else’s. All of them writhing, Wash pulled them across the room and knocked over the table.

    “No, no, no, you’re not actually going to give me Captain America-”

    With all the denial of how stupid the hospital staff could possibly be, with all the thoughts of North and York and South, Wash fought his aides all the way down the hall until someone jabbed a syringe into his bicep and everything went slack.

I need this on my blog.

I think I remember you posting it before (because I remember my intense emotional reaction to it), but I’m not complaining, at all, ever.

This is just so heart-wrenchingly perfect, seriously.