...I go by Naught

Fandom-focused sideblog, with a dash of 'Tony Stark [et al.] deserved better in the MCU and here's my attempt to fix it'. My Fic Ideas My Fics

[dontcallmecarrie]

My AUs, Fics, and Everything In Between

[Apologies in advance for the long post, but hopefully this will cooperate with mobile and make sure everyone’s on the same page.]

Just as a general PSA, I have quite a few AUs going on. Not all of them are full-blown fics, but they all have their own tag for if I ever have the time and energy to get around to writing it. The outline for said AU contains major spoilers for the ending of said hypothetical fic if you’re a stickler for that sort of thing [apologies in advance— sometimes I stick to them when writing, sometimes I don’t]. You’ll also notice some overall trends, such as my being bitter about the MCU’s writing from Phase 2 onwards, the MCU’s tendency to fridge moms, and the staggeringly wasted potential of Star Wars’ sequel trilogy.

Format is as follows: Outline, general description, status, link to fic [if applicable], tag on tumblr

Marvel Cinematic Universe:

The War is Far From Over Now: in which it’s Tony’s self-awareness, rather than self-confidence and/or support system, that became a cryptid sometime during Phase II. aka the Accidental World Domination AU Complete: fic on AO3, behind-the-scenes stuff on tumblr

sidefic on AO3 here, and tag for cracky post-fic thought exercises here.

Moments of a Dying World: a tragedy in which rocks fall, everyone dies, and Thanos is vaguely impressed by the carnage. Complete. fic on AO3, tag on tumblr

The Fix-It Version [I Probably Won’t Be Writing Because I Can’t Do Romance To Save My Life], aka the Inception-y Romance AU: in which it was all just a dream, which is actually far less comforting than what it sounds like. What you see is what I have— don’t really have a name for this AU, this is the tag I have for it meanwhile

Whisper of Every Waking Hour: the Hanahaki AU. Complete: fic on AO3, what I have on tumblr [including several alternate endings]

Welcome To The Family: in which Natasha is a far better friend [or, my attempt at a character study for one of the female characters whose writing got butchered] WIP: fic on AO3, tag on tumblr

By Myself But Not Alone: in which time travel occurs, and fixits abound…now if only the butterfly effect weren’t a thing. aka the time travel tire fire AU WIP: fic on AO3, what I have for it on tumblr

By Dawn’s Early Light: the one where Maria Stark née Carbonell burns empires with a smile, and things go sideways from there. WIP: fic on AO3, what I have for it on tumblr. 

note: this AU’s my go-to for when I’m dealing with writer’s block, by which I mean that there’s some experimental concepts that may or may not be considered canon to the fic. Heed the tags.

An Old Acquaintance Severed: in which Tony does meet up with Aldrich Kilian, but creates a monster anyway. What you see is what I have— don't have much other than a name for this AU, doesn’t actually have a tag yet, whoops

Ere The World Falls: my attempt to mix Norse mythology and the MCU in a way that doesn’t give me a headache. WIP: fic on AO3, tag on tumblr

Fire At Will: in which Civil War sees a roster change with far-reaching consequences. Just an idea, don’t have much for it otherwise. tag doesn’t have much, anyway.

All It Takes Is A Spark: more of a concept than anything else, really. In which Tony’s Mexican-American, and...it shouldn’t change anything. In the great scheme of things, it doesn’t matter what his mother tongue was. [Except for the way it really, really does.] no fic idea, don’t have anything going for it other than the tag.

Watch The Power Fold: Obadiah Stane was a huge influence in Tony’s life. How about we dial that up a notch? [just a thought exercise currently.]

bonus fixit that turned into its own AU here, feat. Nick Fury taking Obadiah’s place and Tony becoming the spitting image of his father in more ways than one. Going to need to rename one of these if I ever get around to writing it— I’m currently using the same tag for both

Live Through The Rain: crossover in which Maria Stark’s hometown was Night Vale. Cue butterfly effect. Complete: fic on AO3, tag on tumblr

Just Hide Behind Your Pride: Howard’s perspective of this AU. [Hint: he’s pretty damn oblivious.] Complete: fic on AO3, tag on tumblr

Only The Names Change: Tony-centric sequel to LTTR, picks up from where it left off and slated to go up to the first Avengers movie. Currently just a concept, though the tag has some ideas I’m playing with

Walking In The Footsteps: the Stark Family Reunion, which goes as well as can be expected. Also currently just a concept— tag’s mostly just me spitballing ideas

No Hero [Downward Descending]: Justin Hammer’s name wasn’t always Justin Hammer. He doesn’t really remember what it was anymore, but he knows that much. Started out a cracky thought exercise, now is something else entirely, tag on tumblr, what’s been crossposted to AO3

Dandelion -Wishes Brought To You-

Under the Same Sky: in which I, lowkey bitter about some things that went down in the game, decide to take a stab at how I would’ve written a Wizard route. Meant to be a mix of mystery and romcom tropes, in between the identity crises and questioning about one’s purpose in life that Dandelion specializes in. I...should post a fic idea, shouldn’t I? Even if it’s super-mega-spoilery for the entire AU. fic on AO3, tag on tumblr that I don’t really use

Summer is Here Again: prequel to Under The Same Sky, answer to the questions raised in the main fic... and that’s about the only thing they have in common, because UtSS is a romantic mystery and this is straight-up psychological horror and tragedy. posted to AO3, don’t really have a tag for it

Star Wars Sequel Trilogy:

The Rise of Darth Calamity/The Man Who Sold The World: the one where Ben Organa Solo inherits his grandparents’ social justice rants instead of any murderous tendencies. WIP: fic on AO3, my rambling about it on tumblr

Darth Calamity’s the main AU, but I also have the idea for a remix that has 100% less angst and 200% more shenanigans, thus the reason most of it’s also tagged with ‘The Man Who Sold The World’.

also, because I am fueled by equal parts caffeine and Spite™, the tag ‘in which Darth Calamity meets canon and absolutely no one is happy’. Is it petty? Yes. Do I care? I sat through the The Last Jedi, and Rise of Skywalker was the last movie I ever watched in theaters and finally discovered something I despised as much as MCU’s Civil War, does it look like I care?

Misc:

Blurred Lines: a Doctor Who/Sherlock crossover, wherein Martha Jones replaces John Watson. Cue divergences. [outline’s not posted, on the basis that it is a mess because it’s the very first fic I ever came up with] WIP: fic on AO3, what I have on tumblr

Twilight/Welcome to Night Vale crossover: In which Bella hails not from Phoenix, Arizona, but from a friendly desert community where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful, and mysterious lights pass overhead on a regular basis. What you see is what I have, and I don’t really feel inspired to poke at it anymore. Doesn’t even have a tag, other than Twilight

About me:

shit keeps going down in my life, don’t ask me to update faster because that will kill any motivation I have for just about any given WIP. 

My AO3 

My FFN [...that I haven’t touched in years, because my writing style does not mesh with that website’s formatting]

My Dreamwidth [...that I also don’t touch and use it solely for archival purposes, because if I lose everything I ever wrote here I would not be a happy camper]

[burkiningalerisi-deactivated202]

[redscharlach]

I feel you, Artoo.

[redscharlach]

May the 4th be with you, tired people of the universe.

[dontcallmecarrie]

me, after the latest Big Career Move: wow that took a LOT of work and dumb luck, whew, good thing I can relax now! AND now I actually have time for my hobbies, like my poor, poor WIPs...

also me: *applies to law school*

[dontcallmecarrie]

Following the offer to talk fics; I'm curious about Blurred Lines? I know it's one of your older AU's, so a chance to dredge your mind?

[years on tumblr and I'm still not familiar with how gifs work]

...yeah, I'm not proud of the delay on this one. Part of the problem is that I started writing Blurred Lines when I was an aspiring pre-med student, only life hit like a freight train and next thing I know, the stuff I'd researched for my other fanfic now makes up a good chunk of my career.

Heads up for major spoilers on this AU.

I'd planned on refreshing my memory on Doctor Who, BBC Sherlock (the first two seasons, I mean, because the decision-making for season three onward was...A Choice™), and reread the books for good measure because I'd planned on trying to get both Irene Adler and James Moriarty as recurring characters with their own motivations and intersection with the protagonists because I was trying to make this universe seem bigger and avoid just rehashing the show(s).

Specifically, Irene was going to be flirting with Martha and no one (Martha, Sherlock, or the audience) would be able to tell with certainty if she was just using her flirting as a distraction from her other schemes, using it to entertain herself (because Sherlock in particular gets Jealous™ and everyone apart from Martha can tell and are basically eating popcorn at some points), or genuinely just trying to shoot her shot with the badass who for some bizarre reason chooses to spend her time with the tall weirdo in a fancy coat.

Also: Martha Jones tries to be low-key and avoid being the center of attention (easy, when standing next to Sherlock Holmes), but I also want her to be the kind of BAMF who, once you notice it, can't unsee it. She has Connections™ in UNIT, knows six different ways to kill a man, can disarm a bomb while running on three hours of sleep and unholy amounts of caffeine, and give directions to thoroughly lost tourists in their native language immediately after. Is it any wonder that figuring out What is Up with her is one of Sherlock's favorite thought exercises?

Moriarty, meanwhile, would prove to be an even bigger threat than in the tv show, simply because his network for disappearing people turns out to involve some of the stuff we've seen in Doctor Who. Such as, y'know, Weeping Angels. While he's still obsessed with Sherlock, some of his fixation also stems from the strange dreams he sometimes has of Sherlock's roommate (that the audience knows comes from the Year That Never Was).

I...would need to do a lot of research to make this sound plausible, but I know I didn't want to kill him off during the Reichenbach confrontation with Sherlock. The other big thing is that Sherlock fakes his death anyway, and Martha has to watch because if she blinked, the statue right behind him would kill him instead.

I have several pages of post-Reichenbach grief already written: Martha ends up scaring everyone who met her after she moved in with Sherlock because she falls back on old habits. Hard. The "I watched the end of the universe, survived the end of the world, carried the weight of it on my shoulders and had to pretend everything was okay afterwards, no, really, I'm fine :)))" parts.

She compartmentalizes hard, and where people had kind of been expecting her to be a weeping widow of sorts, she just. Shuts down and reverts to soldier mode. And soldiers on, and throws herself into every mission UNIT has to offer.

I have like two snippets of her time in UNIT, one of which is her saving Amy and Rory's lives via being another set of eyes that prevents the Weeping Angels from doing what they did.

After that, I just have a vague idea of how the finale would look like, as all the plotlines converge and the Doctor ends up going "hey wait, Sherlock Holmes? Like the novels? Oh, must be one of the dimensional resets that blurred some lines" (and yes, that's also the title drop moment). There'd be a lot of gawking going on, and the Doctor would have a lot of fun at first with the prospect of talking to Sherlock Holmes in the 21st century... meanwhile everyone else is staring because five minutes listening to this extraterrestrial talk and no wonder Martha doesn't bat an eye at the shit Sherlock pulls!

Sherlock may or may not be Jealous™ of the Doctor. Partly because he can see all the parallels and is Very Very Uncomfortable about it, partly because this guy offered Martha "a quick trip, for old time's sake" and he had just reunited with her! After spending way too long undercover, and faking his death for his loved ones, and now one of them might be leaving?! Again???

He doesn't even bother trying to hide his relief when she says no. That she's okay right where she is now.

...not proud of this, but I still haven't fully decided whether Martha and Sherlock are a romantic couple, or a constantly-mistaken-for-being-in-a-relationship friendship. Was leaning more towards the former for a while, but still have that little tendril of doubt.

[dontcallmecarrie]

My sympathy for being an introvert dealing with the public; I only have to talk to medical professionals and I still wonder if I can find a job where I can talk to fewer people/deal with fewer stupid questions. I was going through your WIPs and stumbled across the WTNV and twilight crossover, it's delightfully cracky! As for option C irt New Moon, did I read that right and the Voluturi would know about Nightvale/the secret council? I imagine the history of that would be Something.

When it's a good day, it's great, but when it's not, it's...three phone calls within five minutes and counting. No in between.

And I'm glad you caught that! Yes, the Volturi know about Night Vale and its...eccentricities. Maybe a young Cecil stumbled across them when he was touring Europe and baffled everyone when he survived the tour, or maybe one Caius or one of the others fell through a space-time vortex and clawed their way back home, cursing the entire way.

The big thing is, the Volturi took one look at this little town, and collectively went "...as the vampire police, we're going to be keeping an eye on this eldritch abomination [even if it gives us a migraine because supernatural bullshit barely makes sense as is]".

Are they happy about it? No. And the feeling's mutual in the sense that Night Vale's City Council hates outsiders interfering with whatever it is they do and for the first [and possibly only] time ever, the angels agree with the City Council on something. The Tourism Board is similarly unhappy about how these too-pretty invulnerable randos keep trying to run off potential visitors whenever they get the chance. But for decades, they'd been at a tentative stalemate as the Volturi decided to focus on keeping Night Vale's weirdness contained, if they couldn't collect it or use it for their own benefit.

it took quite a bit of experimenting for the Volturi to figure it out; Aro was especially disappointed they couldn't weaponize any of it. But any attempts to poke around only get them an increasingly-hostile town that seems to get more powerful with every failed experiment*, so they are forced to cut their losses.

*Said experiments include, but aren't limited to:

sending a vampire in to see what happens [gets turned into a middle-aged human the first time, gets snatched up by a Librarian the second, gets bitten by an Antique the third],

sending in humans to do the same [the first gets dragged off by the Sheriff's Secret Police, the second ends up blending in so well that they cut contact with the Volturi because "who even cares about vampires, I am a substitute teacher and can fistfight god", and the third got killed by an evil twin within an hour of setting foot in town],

trying to figure out WTF is up with the local spacetime distortions [no explanation to be found],

trying to get their hands on whatever artifacts they can find. Only, taking said artifacts out of town also strips them of whatever power they had.

Only, of course, then something happened that wiped Night Vale off the map, and as far as they were concerned, the problem solved itself. Bit of a bummer, sure, but at least now there's no need to worry about the secrecy of the supernatural.

...and then Bella shows up, proving those little freaks can somehow breach containment.

Despite being the only human of the bunch, she's the sole reason the entire Volturi now has a pounding headache.

[dontcallmecarrie]

For those interested in the By Dawn's Early Light AU:

I have exactly one (1) mental image left for this AU, and nothing as far as how to expand this into an actual chapter:

Steve finding out Bucky's alive and not only okay but doing great and!!! That means he's not alone in this strange new time!!! Sure, apparently he's Renegade, a vigilante affiliated with Juno [aka: vague organization with no discernible motive SHIELD can figure out beyond a beef with HYDRA], but who cares, BUCKY IS ALIVE!!!

Approximately 0.2 seconds later, Bucky decks Howard Stark. With his metal fist. Goes, "normally, I'd feel bad about punching an old man, but you've had it coming for years."

Part of the issue is that...well, neither Maria nor Tony would ever willingly go near Howard if they could help it. At first because of the obvious "Tony was technically kidnapped and if Howard found him, he'd have him under 24/7 armed guard for the rest of his life (even if he STILL probably wouldn't actually bother getting to know his own kid)" thing, but once Tony turns 18, things get a little complicated.

Legally, of course, he can do whatever he wants now that he's an adult. Only, Howard's been looking for him for roughly a decade now: and hey, maybe part of it's genuinely wanting to reunite with his kidnapped son. But.

There's always going to be that undercurrent of doubt, because the same way he'd once bragged to his then-wife that no judge would give her custody, Tony knows Howard's search for him has element of vanity that no one else would ever see. After all, who else has lived with the guy? Who else knows that tone as much as him or his mom, has seen the way he can switch between charismatic businessman and raging alcoholic?

Sure, some people are all about confronting their past and all that good stuff, but... Tony had nightmares as a kid, of Howard finding them. Of destroying the peaceful lives he and his mom and his uncle had built, mundane but safe and happy. And then SHIELD really HAD found them, and everything went to hell in a handbasket, and long story short, Tony wants nothing to do with Howard.

So getting them in the same place would be. An achievement.

At the same time, I really want to see the fireworks that would be them in the same room as Steve and Bucky— it would be that type of awkward, watching the culmination of decades of family drama reach a critical point between the man who's tried to paint himself as the poor father whose crazy ex kidnapped their son, the uncle who saw said kid grow up and now has a chance to have Words(TM) with the guy responsible for the reason both Tony and Maria deliberately didn't react to loud noises, or yelling, or breaking glass. [Maria is kinda haunting the narrative here because tbh I'd envisioned her as a lowkey chaotic neutral Moriarty-esque character whose main goal has already been achieved by this point and I also don't see her wanting to have anything to do with her ex if she can help it.]

All in all, it's a messy situation all around. Messy enough that I keep putting off writing it.

...also: I know it's been A While since I've been on tumblr, but can we no longer reply to comments anymore in posts? Or is it just my computer being weird?

[dontcallmecarrie]

You know what? No. I've had a kinda rough week month whatever, as an attempt at a change of pace, if anyone sends in an ask about any of my current WIPs, I'll post what I have for it. Even if it's just bullet points that refuse to turn into actual fic, because at this rate, the heat death of the universe will happen before I finish any of them.

[dontcallmecarrie]

me, right around when schedules were being finalized for the holidays: take a break? A day off or something?

my wallet: lol

the schedule: yeah, um, so this place is going to be a ghost town if you do that. You can, but do you really want to leave your coworker to handle it on their own?

me: ...great.

the weather: oh, and here's some fog and and rain and snow to spice things up on your commute!!!

me: ...great

[dontcallmecarrie]

my brain: write! write!!!

me: one coworker put in their two weeks' notice, another's out on maternity leave and that's not even touching my classes

my brain: W R I T E

me: ...thank goodness for pocket notebooks and quiet commutes

[gjdraws]

WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS

WHO IS USING THIS

AN APP??? THEY HAVE A FUNCTIONING WEBSITE

THE LAST FUNCTIONING WEBSITE

[iguanodonwildman]

Reminder that ao3 does not have an app. Any apps you see are third party and are making money off of the writers without their consent. They’re also probably harvesting your data. Do not support this garbage.

[dontcallmecarrie]

Here we go again.

[dontcallmecarrie]

me in undergrad during and after Finals Week, my beloathed nemesis: questionable life choices feat. semiregular cram sessions at the library, dubious sleep schedules, the occasional migraine, and post-exam jitters that got dozens of chapters written

me now: do you really want to run on less than six hours of sleep tomorrow? lol no

[thenon-binaryone]

we had one good day as Marvel fans

[dontcallmecarrie]

tfw The Man Who Sold The World seems to want to start doing its own thing so I have to beating it with a stick going "back! back! this is going to be found family, you do not need more worldbuilding!" but it's not really working because my brain's bouncing like a ping-pong ball between classes and a new job where it's just Imposter Syndrome, Electric Boogaloo

also, the Finn conundrum. Because he plays a key role in Darth Calamity, but TMWSTW's shaping up to feature Ben and Rey, but fitting Finn in? The easy version would be to have him be a Jedi [read: a Force-sensitive orphan who Ben is thrilled to meet because finally, a kid who actually wants to take up his offer for a free ride to the Jedi Academy!!! And has common sense!!!] but can't help but feel that'd be a cheap cop-out on a number of levels. What with one of Finn's key defining moments coming from being a Stormtrooper indoctrinated practically from birth yet still standing up and going "no, this is wrong"— so taking that moment away from him rubs me wrong. But he's not going to have a chance to show up in this AU until a lot later, regardless... Hmm.

[dontcallmecarrie]

focusing on NHDD!Justin's first life in this one. Mostly experimental because this AU was originally meant to be a character study on the making of a villain [...which got derailed almost immediately], only slightly touching on the vague echoes of his first life. But since my brain hates me, here, have one of the most out-there-probably-not-canon things for this AU yet. Also, for anyone lost about what's going on: a while ago, I did a what-if-this-canon-event-happened-in-NHDD thought exercise. To sum up: because Justin's a) technically reincarnated and b) originally from another dimension entirely, the Soul Stone basically went "you. I like you. you know what, since you have two lives, give me the one you don't even really remember and we'll be even". Which is what ended up happening in the original ending. However... what if Justin had made a different choice?

Just like in that thought exercise, heads up for some pretty heavy themes— this time revolving around the aftermath of implied Major Character Death [which, in this alternate ending, is the result of Justin choosing to sacrifice his second life instead of his first], and different types of dysfunctional families.

.

Sometimes, it felt like nothing more than a dream. An oddly long, overly detailed and sometimes confusing fever dream, sure, but the point was, Mercedes Garcia woke up.

Everyone said it was a miracle she'd survived the accident, but Mercedes couldn't shake the strange flash of orange and 'so you've decided, little outsider?' that was the last thing she remembered before she opened her eyes.

It sounded fantastical, the sort of thing that happened in movies— but then, Justin Hammer's entire life seemed to have been a strange mix of Gossip Girl and comic books.

But this was the real world, where Mercedes had missed her own graduation, and now had her own astronomical hospital bills on top of rent and student loans to worry about. Not to mention her incredibly freaked out parents, who hadn't been exactly happy about her choice of college to begin with, and were now even more freaked out over the fact that she'd be moving to the on the other side of the state for it.

As if it were any different to how it'd been before the accident, when she'd been lucky to see her both parents for more than three hours a week between school, her part-time job, and helping care for Abel. The cynical part of her that she hadn't thought even existed before the accident muttered darkly about free babysitters, but she knew they cared about her. Even if they'd never really had the opportunity to show it, not when her baby brother needed everything they could give— but she had never doubted they cared about her.

It's just... Mercedes needed the distance. Like, sure, she could've gone with community college and taken things from there— but even since before the accident she'd been itching to get out. Sure, tiny shoebox apartment to tiny shoebox dorm wasn't much of a difference, but at least she got the chance to be normal for the first time since Abel had been diagnosed.

So she went to college, like almost everyone her age, and called home during the weekends, and let herself fall into the rhythm of classes and finding another part-time job and trying not to think too hard about the occasional flashes of deja vu she'd been having the entire time.

College was much easier than high school had been, and Mercedes wasn't sure how much of it was practice being on her own versus the lingering remnants of that weird dream. It made her head hurt if she tried to think about it too much— because if it hadn't just been a coma dream, then what was it?

And if she cracked open Pandora's Box, the questions would never stop. About why it'd been much easier to interact with her classmates now than back in high school, or why economics felt so intuitive. The specifics of some of the study habits she'd picked up seemingly overnight, why her patience seemed to have dried up since the accident, or, hell, how a girl who'd only ever shopped at thrift stores was able to blend in with the trust fund kids on campus. Why it'd suddenly become so easy to say no, after a lifetime of bending over backwards saying yes.

So Mercedes tried not to dwell on it. She took things one day at a time, a week at a time, called her family, and tried not to be exasperated when her roommate moved out partway through the year to live with her boyfriend.

And then things started to get really weird.

The first time it happened, she was at work. A tall, heavily muscled and tattooed man wandered into the cafe constantly checking his phone. Which shouldn't have been anything out of the usual, but he also kept looking around. A lot. She'd assumed he had planned on meeting someone, but his increased desperation as the cafe entered its rush hour told her he'd been stood up. Before she could ask if he needed help, however, he swept away without a backwards glance.

The second time, Mercedes had finished her last class of the day. A very tall cosplayer with an eye-catching leather jacket swept into the biggest lecture hall on campus just as she was heading out, and she had to swerve to avoid bumping into him because he refused to look away from his phone. Which, rude, but he was probably a new transfer for the computer science class that was scheduled to start in a few minutes so she didn't think much of it.

Not long after that, she saw a stranger during her usual grocery run. Which normally wasn't very notable, but he had the most memorable prosthetic she'd ever seen, and stared at her when she asked if he needed help. In her defense, he'd looked lost and one of her first jobs had been restocking shelves, so it really was just habit to ask!

"No, I'm...looking for someone." He finally answered with a slightly raspy voice, and she gave him a polite smile.

"Oh. Good luck, then." She said lamely, and speed-walked to the nearest self-checkout because the sooner she could forget about the embarrassment of her customer service autopilot kicking in, the better. Abel would never, ever let her live it down if he got wind of it.

The last time... was when Mercedes wondered if the stress of finals week had maybe gotten to her after all, because hallucinating portals in her bedroom was new. And that was before multiple people tumbled out of it, ruining her freshly-washed sheets in the process.

.

aaaand you can see where I ran out of steam for this.

tl;dr: Cabal, upon discovering Justin chose to sacrifice his life to obtain the Soul Stone, collectively went "fuck that, we're getting him back" and promptly set to tracking down where his soul went off to. Are they confused as to why all the sensors/Soul Stone keeps pointing them to some random universe where there's no magic or superheroes or aliens? Yes, but that's not about to stop them. [You decide if they chose to save their world before tracking Justin down, or if they ditched their universe entirely because what was the point of saving it if it didn't have Justin in it?]

There's going to be a lot of confusion at first, as Mercedes Garcia is most definitely not Justin Hammer, but I figure Cabal'd cotton on pretty quick as to what happened. And then, things get pretty dicey because there's multiple emotional bombshells to navigate, some less fun than others.

Some ideas for how it'd go from here:

Option 1: Cabal in Mercedes' World

Very introspective, with multiple emotional bombshells going on back-to-back, basically:

The "you're not our friend" realization, wherein Cabal looks at the twenty-something college student who apparently has their friend's soul but looks at them with no recognition whatsoever. This is the point where most people would leave her alone, but... we're talking about a hyperaggressive and overpowered friend group with dubious morals. So, for the sake of this thought exercise, Cabal ends up [re-]befriending Mercedes. Which leads to:

The "you're not the person who was the heart and soul of our group [but oh god I can definitely see the resemblance]" bombshell, feat. Cabal discovering just how much of tire fire Justin Hammer's mental state was, specifically because Mercedes is visibly much, much happier than he ever was. Which, as it turns out, is a very low bar, as Mercedes is a hot mess who spent the vast majority of her short life going "can't complain, my family is going through a Very Hard Time right now without me making it worse. but really, I'm Fine :)" but she definitely loves said family, and she's so optimistic it's painful to watch.

Sure, some of it could be chalked up to the fact that she's much younger than the Justin they knew, but... still that habit of always trying to help people. Of being an older sibling, a chronic mom friend, and always asking if they're hungry and offering what little a broke college student can afford.

Interspersed in this is the "you chose to abandon us/did we ever really know you?" emotional SNAFU, because there's bound to be grief and resentment over the fact that, well, a dear friend chose death over sacrificing a past life who, tbh, nobody in Cabal would've really missed in the long run. Like, by this point they know Justin was a reincarnated soul, but 1) they found this out via the Soul Stone going "hey idk what to tell you, they're the one who chose this life over the other one ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ don't take it up with me", and 2) this means that, on some level, Justin chose an honestly not-great life over his friends.

On a funnier note: the "...so, now what?" moment, because, well, Cabal is not about to lose their friend again.

And here's where things get entertaining in a hurry because at some point, they're going to suggest everyone moving in together. Hey, it's practically tradition by now, Justin was the one who started it with all his safehouses! Besides, it's only logical to share space with someone you trust, more efficient and cost-effective. Only, well, Mercedes' parents are going to [understandably] freak out over the idea of their twenty-something daughter moving in with four rich men who showed up out of nowhere and are apparently asking to have her live with them rent-free. That all of said guys seem to be like twice her age does not help, and all of them are Very Very Dangerous. Ivan especially looks like a parent's worst nightmare, but none of them are the type of guy you'd want to meet in a dark alley, so...

Slightly Fun Moment Two: Tony Stark shows up sometime during this mess. Cue fireworks.

Option 2: The 'It Was All Inside Your Head' Ending

Wherein it turns out that Mercedes' life after waking up was a Soul Stone-induced dream, because it wanted Justin to know, acutely, what exactly they're giving up if they were to pick their first life. Only, Cabal barges into Justin's dreamscape to tell him he's in a coma, please wake up, and now he has to choose which life to return to.

It would be a hard choice, because with Mercedes' memories so fresh in his mind, there's honestly not much going for Justin Hammer's life other than Cabal and Tony. There's no amount of money that could possibly make up for losing the family who cared about her, for instance, and the constant threat of alien invasions and whatnot isn't exactly a selling point. On the other hand, Justin's imposter syndrome is on a scale comparable only to Tony's genius, so... not a fun conversation for anyone involved.

[dontcallmecarrie]

me, almost a month ago: hey, here's some headcanons about NHDD!Justin that came to mind at 3 in the morning because neighbors have an incredible speaker system and are clearly itching to show it off

life: —and here's finals and job interviews and btw homework's due tomorrow! lol good luck

me: but at least writer's block isn't an issue, right?

life: lol

[dontcallmecarrie]

aaaand guess who forgot to post said headcanons until now, whoops.

[dontcallmecarrie]

me, almost a month ago: hey, here's some headcanons about NHDD!Justin that came to mind at 3 in the morning because neighbors have an incredible speaker system and are clearly itching to show it off

life: —and here's finals and job interviews and btw homework's due tomorrow! lol good luck

me: but at least writer's block isn't an issue, right?

life: lol

[dontcallmecarrie]

me, during a power outage: welp there go today's plans for studying for the final

my brain: ...

me: oh no

my brain: hey remember this very very niche AU snippet for NHDD where Justin Hammer goes through 1.5 existential crises to get the Soul Stone? The one where he ends up sacrificing his first life to get it? Well what if it'd been his second life instead?

me: THIS is what somehow sneaks past writer's block? Not a new chapter for any of my other WIPs that've been waiting for years, but this???