annefiction

Inactive. Follow me at anneapocalypse for current writing. AO3 Navigation Archive

[annefiction]

If you follow me on my main, you know that I'm back on tumblr! I am still writing fic regularly, but I've decided that at this point I'm not interested in keeping up a separate writing sideblog.

If you'd like to follow just my fic updates, the best way is to subscribe to me on AO3. If you'd like to see fic updates plus all the nonsense I post in between, you can follow me at @anneapocalypse.

Thanks for reading and for all your support. 💙

[anneapocalypse]

Someone Else's Story

Dragon Age. Varric Tethras & Female Hawke, gen. 1600 words. Rated G. Written for CelestialArcadia for the Chocolate Box Exchange.

* * *

The problem with being a writer is you get a feel for how stories end.

Granted, Hawke has surprised him before, but there's a reason Varric didn't want her in this plotline. So when one of the scouts blows through the Great Hall at far too brisk a pace, Varric counts to three and then follows him up the long curved stair.

"Rector," he hears Leliana say, before the kid's reached the top, "what is it? Have you news from Adamant?"

Even in what appears to be a state of barely-concealed panic, Rector assumes a businesslike posture before the spymaster. "They've fallen into the Fade, Nightingale. The Inquisitor, and several others."

Read on AO3

[anneapocalypse]

3 AM

Red vs. Blue. Agent Carolina & Dylan Andrews. Gen. Post-Season 17. Background Carolina/Kimball, past Carolina/York. For RvB Pick ‘n’ Mix by @fanvsfic.

*

It’s three in the morning when Carolina gets the text. Which is fine. She’s awake, and anyone who knows Carolina knows she’s awake, so she figures it’s Wash, or Tucker, or even Vanessa checking in after a very late Council session, and grabs her COM pad to look.

The number is unknown, but the notif shows her the first few words of the text: Hi Carolina, it’s Dylan Andrews…

Carolina unlocks the COM pad and thumbs through her contacts. Did Andrews change her number? She should be in there—

except they changed the timeline, so that call and their little conversation about art history never happened, and Carolina never saved her number. Right.

This still happens a lot. She’s trying to get used to it. They all are. Wash likes to tease her about it, says it’s nice to know he’s not the only one who can’t remember things right.

Carolina opens the full text.

Keep reading on AO3

[anneapocalypse]

The Perimeter

Red vs. Blue. Carolina, Epsilon, & Wash. 700 words. Rated T. Gap-filler for season 12 episode 16 “Out of the Frying Pan.” Written for the RvB Fill in the Blanks challenge hosted by @fanvsfic.

Chorus is in peril, Charon is on their heels, Church won’t quit snapping at people, and Carolina doesn’t know how to talk to Wash.

***

Carolina lets Church be until they get out of earshot of the Reds and Blues. He’s not talking, not even in her head, but she can feel him sitting there at the base of her skull, not exactly seething but more like… sulking. For god’s sake. Should have left him with Caboose. Maybe a few hours with his old buddy would set him straight.

Wash treads half a step behind her, also silent. Carolina follows suit until she can’t stand all three silences at once.

Was all of that really necessary, Church?

He bristles instantly. Oh, don’t you start in on me, too!

Church, nobody started in on you.

Keep reading on AO3

[annefiction]

As of January 1, 2020, this blog is effectively closed. I won’t be posting fic here anymore.

You can keep up with me and with my current writing on AO3 and dreamwidth. I’m also on twitter, though I don’t post fanfic there.

Thank you all for your support over the years. See you around!

[anneapocalypse]

So, just an update for the folks following me here, I’m probably going to be moving away from tumblr even more in 2020.

Keep reading

[annefiction]

Ribs

Red vs. Blue. Carolina, gen. 600 words. Rated T. Warnings: Injury, vomiting. Something in the spirit of Whumptober, though this isn’t for any particular prompt. Missing moment on the Pelican after the Sarcophagus mission.

"What happened, you get hit by a bus down there?”

“Something like that.”

Read on AO3.

[annefiction]

The Way We Win

Red vs. Blue. Carolina/Kimball. 57,000 words. Rated E. Part 4 of Inroads, a Kimbalina series. [Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3]

Agent Carolina’s adventures in self-sabotage, and a relationship that might even work out despite her best efforts.

Or, how they got to that shoulder-touch, and what happened after.

*

Kimball spots that aqua armor motionless in the snow, and her heart does not stop, not quite.

After the disaster at Crash Site Alpha, it almost feels like it should.

*

Grif brings the bird down between the trees as best he can, as best anyone could, really—there’s no clearing in the dense pines and they can hear branches snapping against the hull on the final descent. Steam billows up before the windshield, obscures the tiny window in the back hatch, where the heat of the Pelican’s engines meets the snow.

There is still something about a winter-white landscape that puts Kimball on high alert. Snow means north, means high altitudes, means Federal strongholds in the mountains, Fed soldiers in their white armor, the bright glare of danger every rebel in desert drab well knows.

Even now, with the truce, it gets her blood up. And the mountains are no less perilous now—just with a different foe.

Read on AO3

[annefiction]

Everybody’s Changing

Red vs. Blue. Jensen/Volleyball. 2700 words. Rated T. Written for @rvbrarepairweek​.

Even after the war, Chorus is always in flux. It's a changing world out there. Sometimes you need a constant.

Set post-season 17. Same continuity as "Hopes & Fears," and kind of a happy sequel to "Over," though you don't need to read those first.

It's chilly this morning, and Katie Jensen rolls out of bed and pulls on her old gray hoodie before even putting her glasses on.

It's silly to keep wearing it, maybe, when it's so worn out, and she really needs to figure out a way to patch the elbows, one of which has worn clean through. She could get a new sweatshirt. An offworld import would cost an arm and a leg, but they do have textile production on Chorus again.

But it wouldn't be this hoodie. Faded and pilled, with ragged cuffs and split seams, the drawstring from the hood long gone. Once bright red, the lettering on the front has worn away to a faint shadow: ARMONIA MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY.

It's the one thing of her own she still has from before the war. And as ragged as it is, the heavy knit fabric hasn't lost all of its warmth. Pulled over a long-sleeved shirt, it's still cozy and soft and comforting.

And sometimes Katie just wants something old and familiar.

Keep reading on AO3

[annefiction]

Red vs. Blue. Agent Carolina, gen. Rated T. 3600 words. Thanks to @zalia for beta reading!

As the battle for Chorus comes to a close, Carolina receives a message passed through time—and one last mission.

AU in which the Reds and Blues actually understand what a paradox is.

Inspired in part by Robert Heinlein’s novella By His Bootstraps.

Armada 8 2551

In the dry heat of Desert Gulch that ripples up from the sandy ground in waves, no one notices the shimmer of active camouflage in the midday sun.

The flagpole, deflected and deflected again, leaves a mark where it strikes the concrete wall and clatters harmlessly to the floor on the upper level of the base. The orange sim trooper flinches on instinct, scrambles back against the wall.

“Hey, watch it!” the blue one snaps, throwing himself in front of the orange soldier in a way that seems… oddly protective, for opposing teams. “You could’ve killed someone!”

“It’s a flagpole,” Agent Carolina hears herself snap. “Don’t be stupid.”

Hello Carolina.

If all has gone according to plan, it is the year 2554 and you have just won the battle for the planet Chorus. Malcolm Hargrove is in custody, or about to be. And you’ve just lost someone very important to you.

Take some time, and when you’re ready, listen to the rest of this message. It’s important.

There’s something you need to do.

Keep reading on AO3.

[annefiction]

Featherlight

Red vs. Blue. South/CT. 340 words. Rated G. Written for the Critique U Flash Fiction Challenge and Femslash February.

The room is dim, morning gray, and South wakes grunting and blinking the sleep from her eyes and feeling for the space beside her in her bed where Connie should be, and isn’t.

Her eyes un-blur and Connie is silhouetted in silver-blue light, sitting up at the end of the bed, shadow side to South, and the light around the feathery soft edges of her hair gives the faint impression of a halo. Her hair hangs to the side toward South, obscuring most of her face—just her lips and the tip of her nose in view. Connie often looks mousey, with the shape of her mouth that shows her front teeth when her face is at rest, lost in thought and looking somewhere South can’t see. Right now, though, something about the slope of her nose and the angle of her jaw makes her look more birdlike, delicate and only just barely at rest, like she might take off at any moment in a flutter of wings.

South starts to speak, and stops. Connie’s lips move, silent, as if speaking to herself or to someone unseen. You could miss it, in the dim light. You could especially miss it when you’re sleepy and not quite sure you’re awake at all. It feels like a dream, almost. Like Connie might look up, and her face turn into someone else’s. Or she might dissolve into thin air, not real at all.

Her lips move again. Talking to herself, maybe, or rehearsing something not yet said. Then Connie turns, and her eyes come into view, and her mouth curves into a smile, and she’s real. Or maybe it’s South that’s real now. Because for a moment there, she felt strangely like Connie was somewhere else, somewhere lightyears away, like South wasn’t in the room, maybe wasn’t real at all. Like maybe she was the dream about to dissolve.

She forgets that moment, almost. For a while. But later, looking back, she will remember Connie with one eye in shadow, featherlight and about to fly away.

[anneapocalypse]

Reasons Why

RWBY Blake/Yang. Rated T. 6000 words. Set mid volume 6. 

Warnings: There are some allusions to Blake’s past relationship with Adam (hence the implied/referenced abuse tag), which I felt was important and unavoidable to contextualize Blake’s running away, but nothing detailed. There is also mention of Raven leaving when Yang was a child.

Written for the Chocolate Box Exchange, for @twistedtransistor​!

Blake is back.

It still doesn’t quite feel real.

Blake is here, sitting next to Yang in a booth in the club car of the Argus Limited, rumbling through the mountains north of Haven.

None of it quite feels real yet. Not Haven or the Vault or the lamp or the train, not Ruby and Weiss tearing around the car squealing or Uncle Qrow trying to bankrupt the bar or Blake, here, at her side again, her amber eyes looking long down the car like she’s not quite seeing it at all, not quite here.

Maybe she isn’t.

Yang has to admit, she digs the new look—the jacket, the boots, the cropped black top. Especially the jacket. They’re both doing a long jacket thing now. It’s a good look.

She noticed right off the absence of Blake’s signature satin bow, her velvet black ears uncovered against glossy hair, and in that moment Yang first laid eyes on her in the threshold at Haven, heart seizing in her chest, all she could think was how stunning Blake looked, how—

how she ran, how Yang could hear her boots striking cobblestone even through the blinding pain and lightheadedness from the blood loss, how she didn’t say goodbye.

Read on AO3

[annefiction]

Recovering

Red vs. Blue. Carolina/Kimball. 700 words. Rated T. Set early in season 16. Written for Femslash February.

Carolina wakes, blinking, under white lights and a blue blur she can’t quite bring into focus. It’s all fog and glare, and a sharp stab in her temples and at the base of her skull that slowly begins to dissipate as her vision clears.

She flexes her hands, moves her arms, and feels it then—a needle taped into the crease of her left elbow. The outline of a clear IV bag hanging on a stand.

And then a hand in hers. Warm and trigger-calloused, and familiar even before it comes into focus.

"Hey," Vanessa says softly. The blue is a suit, two buttons undone at the collar of a white button-down and the hem of the jacket creased from sitting. "I came as soon as I heard."

Read on AO3

[annefiction]

Over

Red vs. Blue. Jensen/Volleyball. 560 words. Rated T. Set pre-season 15. Written for Femslash February.

Katie’s under the hood of a car when it happens, which is pretty normal for her. Not even a military vehicle this time. An actual civilian car that managed to survive the war, and which Matthews brought in to see if she could fix it up. And she can. She definitely can, if she can just get the parts. You can still find plenty of junkers and abandons, too broken down to salvage whole, but still with some functional bits if you know where to look.

She comes home home with grease still under her fingernails, keys into the apartment she shares with Sarita in downtown Nova Armonia. Small by most standards, she supposes, but after so many years in mining barracks, it might as well be a palace.

Sarita is glued to the TV as Katie comes in, taking off her boots in the door and going to the kitchen sink to give her hands a more thorough scrub, but then— “Katie,” Sarita says, and the tension in her voice stops Katie in her tracks.

“Sarita,” she says, “what is it?”

Keep reading on AO3

[annefiction]

Still

Red vs. Blue. Carolina/Kimball. 500 words. Rated G. 

Hello it’s December have some post-war fluff.

Also on AO3.

The apartment is quiet when Carolina comes in, nudging the door shut with one hip and balancing on one foot and then the other to unlace her running shoes with quick fingers. There’s something about this time of the morning—a slant of light through the front window, maybe, a warmth to the silence she can’t quite explain, but one that wraps around her and settles gentle on her skin, herself still warm from her run. She sets her shoes down softly, so as not to disturb the quiet, or Vanessa in the living room.

Vanessa is sitting. Legs crossed, hands in mudra on her knees, eyes closed. She has heard Carolina come in, and that small piece of knowledge is set aside somewhere in the back of her mind, but she maintains her posture, maintains her breath, which Carolina can hear when she holds still and listens. That’s the discipline, Vanessa’s explained to her—whatever happens, whatever thoughts come through your mind, you continue to sit. You don’t let yourself be tossed away.

Carolina can’t imagine making that work for her—she’s tried, a few times, but sitting silent with nothing but her breathing and the noise of her own mind tends to make her want to scream in under a minute. Vanessa talks about quieting the mind. Sitting only seems to make hers louder.

But she gets it, in another way, the discipline part, because that’s like running, like training—where you keep pushing through the resistance, breathing, embracing the burn in your muscles until you hit the flow. There are days when you don’t, and Vanessa says there are days she doesn’t attain quiet in her head either. But you keep running. You continue to sit. In that way, it makes sense.

It makes sense in the way they make sense, somehow, all these months after the war and as different as they are. Though Carolina’s had to fight it sometimes, that impulse to run, because she’s never known, really, how to stop moving. But she’s still here.

Carolina pads quietly past Vanessa to the kitchen and starts up the electric kettle. She’ll get a quick shower, and by the time she’s done the water will be held on the boil, ready for her French press coffee and Vanessa’s tea.

She showers quickly. More noise, she thinks, the sound of the spray, and in the kitchen the hiss of the water heating in the kettle. And Vanessa still sitting, absorbing the sounds of their morning, keeping silence with them.

And when she emerges, her skin still warm from the shower and the run, fastening her bra while she walks with a t-shirt tucked under one arm, Vanessa’s eyes open and she smiles. “Morning.”

Carolina smiles back, and wriggles into her t-shirt. The water’s on the boil, she can hear it now. “Morning.”

Vanessa follows her to the kitchen, and Carolina grinds coffee for her little two-cup press and Vanessa spoons loose black leaves into her tea ball, pours, and passes the kettle to Carolina, and sets a timer for four minutes. And in those four minutes Vanessa slips her arms around Carolina’s waist from behind and smiles into her shoulder. Carolina weaves her fingers between Vanessa’s, turns her head to feel Vanessa’s cheek soft against hers, the warmth of her breath and the brush of her lips and her presence that feels, more and more, like steadiness and calm.

And for a moment, Carolina knows how be still.

[annefiction]

In the Wind

RWBY. Taiyang/Qrow, with past poly!STRQ. 4100 words. Rated E. 18+ readers only.

Qrow Branwen has never been anyone’s first choice.

Read on AO3.

[annefiction]

With the recent changes to tumblr’s TOS and the recent purging of blogs and misflagging of posts, there is a real possibility of some of this blog’s content, or even the entire blog, disappearing. I’m not planning on jumping ship immediately but I’m not sure how long I’ll continue using tumblr.

Follow me on dreamwidth and twitter, and subscribe to me on AO3 if you like. The dreamwidth has regularly updated Where To Find Me and contact info. I’m very much still active in fandom and I promise I won’t disappear without a trace.