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?
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...
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.
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.
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.
Apologies for the radio silence, things've been hectic and some of the highlights of it are: driving through like seven zip codes just to get to a job that's basically the embodiment of imposter syndrome, working two jobs for a hot moment there, quitting one of said jobs after management dropped the ball one too many times, catching covid and trying to walk it off* [*it helped that I'd gotten a booster not long beforehand, and even then it wasn't fun], losing one of my notebooks for over a month, and bouncing between hobbies like a ping pong ball in between grappling with writer's block.
Special mention probably should go to the impromptu road trip from earlier this summer, feat. me possibly seeing a high-speed chase irl [...which isn't as cool as it sounds, it was past midnight and could be summed up as "oh shit, flashing lights and sirens? better pull over- AND there they go" and, less than five minutes later, "huh, I thought this was a freeway, why'd I have to swerve to avoid oncoming traffic? Geez, that could've been bad if my reflexes were any slower. Oh hey, there's the police again- WAIT A MINUTE"] and...not much else, really.
The two jobs thing was brief but exhausting, and didn't help the writer's block at all. More like made it worse, tbh, but the road trip DID give me a few ideas [...that refuse to be anything other than bullet points in my notebook]
thought exercise that apparently refuses to leave me alone: NHDD characters in a scenario that could only happen in the MCU [so, an AU where the Avengers are a hot mess instead of a team and this is way closer to a Bad Ending Timeline than NHDD]. AU of an AU, basically.
This time, featuring the Soul Stone.
Heads up: what some might consider suicidal thoughts [...because of circumstances in-universe, but people get Very Very Concerned]. Unreliable narrator, as well, between Justin’s inferiority complex and the Soul Stone’s influence.
.
This was it.
It had to be, because the other Infinity Stones were now beyond their reach and this wasn’t something Cabal was willing to leave up to chance. Justin Hammer’s faith in his rival notwithstanding, hell would freeze over before he trusted anyone with something of this magnitude.
Not when Loki’s latest trip through the branches of Yggdrasil somehow ended up with him staggering home covered in blood and ichor, hands shaking and the light only returning to his eyes hours after Justin’s best efforts.
And then Loki had found his voice and, in between sips of lukewarm tea, haltingly spoke of what he’d seen. Of a Mad Titan’s conquest, and a gauntlet equipped with two of the most powerful weapons in existence.
It had been the work of moments to put SHIELD on high alert. Even less, to kick the hornets’ nest that was the magicians on Earth via Loki ducking into their artifact storage and moving every piece of furniture a few inches to the right. But.
That still didn’t feel like enough.
Not when that still left one Infinity Stone with nothing but a huge question mark hovering over it, and the grim awareness that if nothing was done then the Mad Titan might very well come to possess three of the six Infinity Stones, and if that were to happen?
Nowhere in existence would be safe.
.
It wasn’t enough.
Advanced warning, all the magicians on Earth working together up to and including the Sorcerer Supreme and it still wasn’t enough.
As it was, they were at a stalemate, and... everyone in Cabal exchanged grim looks as they silently agreed on what they needed to do next. Even if Ivan glowered at the prospect of resorting to magic to counter this latest threat, but by now all signs pointed to the last, still-missing Soul Stone being the best counter to the Power Stone that was the main threat when it came to dealing with the Mad Titan.
.
Merely locating the Infinity Stone ended up being a challenge.
And then, when they finally succeeded?
“You should know...the Stone extracts a terrible price. A sacrifice.”
And with that, the air around Justin Hammer started to glow.
.
“Well, that’s that, then,” the Winter Soldier said with a heavy sigh. “And here I thought this couldn’t get any worse than the end of the world.”
At his side, Loki scoffed, and they both glanced back to where Victor von Doom continued to read Justin the riot act. It was the most furious any of them had ever seen him— and the most scared.
His voice had cracked at least twice, and the grip he had on Justin’s shoulders would undoubtedly bruise later, but no one blamed him. Not when even now, Justin was eyeing the ledge with far too much consideration for comfort, and that?
No one could tell how much of it was the stress of the situation, and how much was...
They’d all known Justin had Issues™— it was practically a requirement for entry into their fucked up little friend group, the one he’d created— but nothing like this. Sure, Winter sometimes made cracks about his self-preservation instincts, but. It was supposed to be just Ivan Vanko and Loki who’d had to contend with those particular demons, not—
But that didn’t change the fact that Justin Hammer had been the only one not to react to the Soul Stone’s immortal envoy.
Or, rather, the only one who hadn’t immediately scowled and said some variation of “fuck no, and fuck you too”; the only one who’d just. Stayed silent, and tilted his head, frowned in consideration, and okay, maybe it’d been an overreaction when Winter had yanked him away from the alcove with the creepy hooded figure, but nobody else was complaining.
.
The crack of a gun stole all their attention for a moment, only to see Ivan storm away from the creepy hooded figure who’d started this mess to begin with.
“I thought you were trying to get more intel, what happened?” Winter asked, and Ivan put it away with a scowl.
“I’m Russian,” Ivan deadpanned. Then, at Winter’s raised eyebrow, he continued. “And he’s one of the most famous Nazis in history.”
Winter’s eyes widened for a moment. "You’ve gotta be kidding— just when I think things can’t get any worse. Fuck, really?”
Ivan glared back towards where the figure was slowly picking himself up again, the dark stain on the his cloak receding. “I hate everything about this. And he just kept repeating that bullshit about a life for a life. And if it wasn’t that, he kept going on that the Stone wants Justin, something about how his wisdom mirrors its own? And I’m pretty sure Victor’s two minutes from going nuclear, and—”
He cut himself off because for a moment, ran a hand through his hair, and started swearing under his breath because he could deal with the potential end of the world bearing down on them, just.
Not this.
.
Justin hadn’t said a word since the Soul Stone’s envoy had mentioned the offer.
They knew it was freaking out everyone else who’d come with them, but...
They’d be a fool if they didn’t at least consider it. Even if just the thought seemed to have fired up everyone else even more than the Mad Titan’s rampage had, but someone had to, since the others insisted on acting like it was some unthinkable and impossible thing.
But death came for them all, and faced between an inevitability and an undeniable advantage...
What did the Soul Stone see in them?
Justin Hammer was no one important, not... as horrible as it sounded, it would’ve made more sense if the Soul Stone had been interested in literally anyone else in Cabal. Sure, it would’ve been a whole other brand of nightmare scenario, but at least then Justin could follow the train of thought that led to that conclusion. They could easily understand it if the Soul Stone had been intrigued by Winter’s strength, or Victor’s power; could easily see how anyone could have been caught up by Ivan’s genius, or Loki’s particular brand of chaos. But Justin?
The closest thing he had to a superpower was his bank account.
In the great scheme of things, it was nothing. They were nothing, considering they regularly interacted with superheroes and gods, were surrounded by the best of what humanity had to offer, and encompassed so much of the worst.
So why was the Soul Stone so interested in them?
And— okay, yeah, they were still avoiding the question. To be fair, though, it was not easy to keep one’s cool when faced with the prospect of either death by apocalypse, or death to obtain artifact of immense power. But at least it’d be worth it, one life weighed against the universe was nothing. It’s not that they were suicidal by any measure, exactly, but Justin had enough self-awareness to be able to take a step back and do the math.
Yet the mere suggestion of it had even Victor— calm and collected Victor, who took pride in his nonchalance and didn’t bat an eye even in the middle of assassination attempts on his life— up in arms at the idea of losing the weakest member of Cabal, and never before had Justin resented their over-protectiveness quite like now.
Really, wasn’t it a bit much?
These were normally the people he could trust to be most capable of looking at things objectively like him, able to separate emotions from the equation when weighing the cost between means and ends and collateral damage.
Sure, it was always different when hypotheticals stopped being hypothetical, but this reaction felt off, somehow; had the the rest of Cabal acting in a way that went far beyond worry for losing a useful ally. Had them more caught up on whatever it was than on thinking of alternatives, and for quite possibly the first time they could remember, they were at a loss as to how to approach this new variable.
No matter, Justin could still work with this. Somehow.
...once they got out of a certain someone’s crushing embrace, anyway.
.
“Let’s talk.”
“Your life is not up for negotiation.” Victor immediately said, eyes flashing and the ensuing conversation only went downhill from there.
.
“Well, that went well.” Justin leaned back into the outcropping with a quiet groan.
The others had unanimously chosen to put him on the closest thing they had to suicide watch, and he had no idea where to start with how to feel about it and now they weren’t even listening to him.
Just. Kept dismissing everything he said out of hand, and it would’ve been bad if it had been anyone else but this was Cabal, the people who, up until today, had always been the ones he could trust to at least take his words into consideration. Could trust in general, because they’d all seen him at his best and worst, and had never so much as flinched.
But now Victor could barely look at him without his hands shaking, and Ivan and Loki had taken to sharing increasingly unreadable looks and Winter had spent the past hour alternating between questioning and pummeling the Red Skull, who apparently had been the person selected by the Soul Stone to be its guardian.
Presumably as punishment, but Justin had yet to understand anything about it, so.
Now they were here, heavily monitored while everyone else made plans to leave and blatantly ignoring the fact that the Mad Titan was very much a pressing threat and they were just going to be leaving behind one of the cornerstones of the universe because nobody bothered to listen to them.
Justin had thought he’d gotten over that hangup from his childhood.
He was not happy to discover otherwise, especially at the end of an exhausting day, on the heels of the stress that came with the impending apocalypse and everything else.
‘It is a heavy burden, is it not?’
...and now came auditory hallucinations on top of everything else. Great.
.
This was nothing less than a nightmare.
Somehow, despite literally everyone being half a second from losing their shit and keeping an eagle eye on Justin goddamn Hammer, he still managed to give them all a heart attack.
Winter hadn’t questioned it when the man of the hour had decided to take a nap, but everyone heard his freakout when Justin didn’t wake up. A frantic check showed no signs of self-harm, but his eyes shone a brilliant gold when they checked his pupils as a last-ditch measure and now the situation was officially out of their control because nobody knew what would happen next.
All they could do now was wait, and hope, and Winter hated every second of it.
.
“Why me?” Justin asked, and he could almost feel the Soul Stone’s amusement.
‘You understand what I am, in a way few could ever dream.’
Justin called bullshit.
‘I offer respite, weary one. You carry the weight of two lives, the loss of one would be a kindness.’
Wait a minute. How had it— oh, of course, Soul Stone, no wonder it was able to see the echoes of a past they’d long since left behind to gather dust. Their deepest and darkest secret, laid bare to the one entity uniquely suited to see it. Well, now they felt foolish.
“And here I thought you called for my death.”
‘It could be, if you so chose.’
Translation: it would be, for literally anyone else. For anyone who didn’t have faded echoes of a life they’d never been able to remember, no matter how hard they’d tried. Justin Hammer had tried to put it out of mind for their own sanity after grad school, but... now that though thought about it, the more they remembered even as their headache grew worse.
A time before Justin Hammer, another life.
One with a family that actually cared, and they’d always been an older sibling but the first time it hadn’t been entirely on them because the child they’d once been had aunts and grandparents, and the nice librarian who hadn’t laughed when the stack of books they’d checked out was almost taller than they could look over, and the neighbor’s dog had always wagged his tail even faster when they were around because they knew where to scratch behind his ears, and their high school had asbestos but also the English teacher who thought their shitty poetry was worth something—
Another life, one where life hadn’t quite gotten around to stamping out their faith in humanity. Or, rather, hadn’t had the chance, even though the hospital visits and bills and part-time jobs had all been steadily chipping away at it, the despair of knowing their paycheck was barely enough for groceries but it’s all they had, since their parents’ went straight towards meds—
Another life. One that was just as much a part of them, as the decades they’d lived as Justin Hammer, and apparently both were equally appealing for the Soul Stone.
They couldn’t help but break down, at that.
In laughter, and tears, and all the layers of fear and grief and tired but still-burning desperate hope because it couldn’t be that simple, could it?
‘Peace, weary one. You have my favor.’
It could.
He’d been scared to hope, but...
“Okay then. Let’s do this.”
.
Ivan was the closest thing they had to a doctor, so he was the one who startled back with a yelp when his not-patient opened his eyes with a gasp.
“Did it work?”
Ivan was half a second from swearing a blue streak, but his attention was caught by the dazed look on his friend’s face.
“You— what did you do?!”
Because before he could even start on his well-deserved rant about stupidly self-sacrificial idiots, Justin unclenched his fists and in his right palm was the unmistakable golden glow of what could only be the Soul Stone.
Justin looked at him and made to respond, only to pause.
“I... you know what? I don’t actually remember.” He looked around with a vaguely confused frown. “Where are we, anyway?”
.
aka this is the AU where Justin gets an Infinity Stone, gives Cabal several heart attacks, and ends up losing the echoes of his past life [...and a good chunk of his childhood memories, because of how much the echoes were part of it].
All in all, Vormir’s technically a net gain in that taking down Thanos is fairly straightforward afterwards, but nobody in Cabal’s ever going to so much as speak of it. It doesn’t help that no one quite gets what exactly went down, since Justin’s still alive but his memories are a mess for a while afterwards, and now there’s an Infinity Stone that randomly pops up around him. Just. Spontaneously shows up in desk drawers, behind the mug he was about to drink, by his keys and he rolls with it but it really freaks most of Cabal out for obvious reasons.
I don’t picture it really affecting Justin, though. Mostly because the other Infinity Stones are being basically deus ex machina plot devices, but the Soul Stone’s presented as this very very Mysterious Mystical Artifact in what I remember of the MCU, instead of the plot device that can be used as a weapon of mass destruction.
Since my brain refuses to let go of this idea, I figure the main offensive potential the Soul Stone has is basically curses like “may you feel all/a fraction/a sliver of the harm you have or ever will inflict on others” and “may you never know a day of peace”, which sounds probably underwhelming but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I’ve got nothing else. Plus I figured it’d be fitting, because stuff like that would be a non-issue for most people, but devastating for a bloodthirsty conqueror-type character like Ronan the Accuser or whatever.
hey if the Mind Stone’s whole schtick is mind control, this sounds vaguely plausible, right?
Also, while I’ve finally excised this what-if from my brain and don’t intend to poke at it anymore for now, anyway, feel free to imagine the potential for chaos that is Justin ‘sky-high charisma stat’ Hammer, with an Infinity Stone.
For anyone wondering what’s going on with BDEL, Darth Calamity and...basically 99% of my AUs: every time I write, stuff going on in my life keeps coming out. Which normally isn’t bad, but we’re talking soap opera levels here. Like, ‘any more and I might as well write a biography’, and that’s Not Fun on a number of levels.
So, status update/ my internal narration on what keeps running through my head on the AUs you guys may or may not be wanting to hear about. Heads up for some minor spoilers, but way less than the outlines linked on my pinned post.
By Dawn’s Early Light:
...I have all of one (1) scene I’m eager to see, and that’s Howard Stark getting punched by Bucky in front of Steve Rogers. And maybe reassess how realistic this AU is, but tbh that feels more like something to tackle in the Coding Nightmare Fic I Have Yet To Finish because like hell I’m rewriting this fic.
By Myself But Not Alone:
look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair! Sing, oh muse, of the hubris of the fool who thought they could make their overly-complicated vision into a reality while only knowing the bare-bones basics of HTML.
...okay, but really, my main problem is that I’ve got several dozen pages of handwritten notes and outlines of potential Bad Endings to spice things up, but. Completely and utterly blocked on actually writing it out. Kinda debating on just posting what I’ve got and calling it a day because my brain refuses to expand on anything right now.
Live Through The Rain AU:
First off, I really want to brush up on Welcome to Night Vale to make sure I’ve got the tone right. Secondly, this one’s slated for Howard Stark redemption/character development boot camp via ‘yeah your world was just completely upended by one of the people you trusted most, no, that was just the first of many curveballs coming your way’, which I write when I’m trying to tackle a sympathetic and nuanced perspective of a very, very complicated man with a lot of issues.
...which means I have to be in the frame of mind to be sympathetic. Which, right now, I am not.
Incidentally, if you’ve noticed a sharp uptick in the levels of family drama in NHDD, this is why. Justin’s father is what happens when I am not inclined towards trying to be sympathetic towards parents who don’t have their shit together and insist on dragging everyone else down with them, Howard Stark is what happens when I’m not venting my issues onto fictional characters. [...apologies, btw, for anyone reading this. I try to keep personal stuff personal, but. This stuff keeps leaking into everything I touch, no matter how hard I try.]
Blurred Lines:
...this was my first fanfic, really. I’m kinda torn on how to approach it, really, because I started it out as an exhausted aspiring pre-med student who was not in a great place.
It’s been years since then; I am not where I’d once expected to be. It’s been over a decade since I’ve been up to date on what’s going on in Doctor Who, and noped out of Sherlock after the hot mess that happened after Season 2. On top of that, my writing’s all over the place because my teenage self had a long way to go when it came to storytelling, and part of me wants to go back and edit but the rest of me can’t help but think, ‘no, this fic has literally grown with you,’ even if it sounds cheesy as all get out.
All I know is, I want to finish this fic. I have a bullet point outline, next to no knowledge of Doctor Who lore and probably need to do a lot of research to do it, but it is going to happen. Eventually.
Ere The World Falls/The Lullaby of Obliteration:
Writer’s block hit me like a battering ram because ETWF was supposed to be finished in a week.
Look, this is what happens when all you have is a single scene you desperately want in the next chapter, but absolutely nothing else. Specifically, this snippet:
“Oh, I like you,” Hela laughed, something as cold and sharp as the rest of her and Tony didn’t know if he was imagining the goosebumps he felt right now.
Also, ETWF’s meant to be chaos incarnate and found family and end with hope for a better future for everyone, but... I kinda wrote myself into a corner on some things, and found a great way to tie Norse mythology and Marvel comics lore that would require either a lot of heavy editing, or a grimdark remix that I don’t actually have the energy to tackle, because I really kinda need happy endings right now.
Darth Calamity/The Man Who Sold The World:
you know what? I’ve been up to my ears in rl family drama, I am not up to writing fictional angst right now. The remix with more identity shenanigans? Maybe, but first I have to wade through Skywalker family drama to get there. Hmm. Where’s inspiration when you need it?
No Hero [Downward Descending]:
yes, I know Justin Hammer doesn’t come across as being good at this supervillain thing. No, I don’t know how we got here either, this was supposed to be my stab at writing a SI-OC [emphasis on the OC] that got a tad bit out of hand. Especially when it came to the family drama, because I originally had zero intention of expanding on it beyond ‘Justin’s life went on Hard Mode from an early age, and it’s part of why they are Like That now’, but turns out Hammer Senior is a great heat sink for some things. Apologies for that, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ turns out I really needed to vent.
...in retrospect, I missed a golden opportunity for said OC to make a comment about vaguely expecting to see everyone running around in spandex, and that is one of the few regrets I have. Just as a metacommentary on how desaturated the movies got later on, compared to what little I know of the comics.
Beyond that, though, I’m having a lot of fun with a protagonist who accidentally weaponized the power of friendship.
The War is Far From Over Now AU:
Main fic’s finished, still too burned out to consider tackling the sidefic.
The plan currently is to take all the ‘Stuff I Couldn’t Quite Fit In’ posts I made- aka all the plot points that ended up getting cut for my sanity, because my heart had been set on finishing TWiFFON before graduating undergrad and even that ended up going sideways- and playing by ear from there.
Specific plot points I’d once been eager to tackle had included stuff like ‘The Curious Case of James ‘Bucky’ Barnes’ [aka SI Legal’s freakout over the files they end up having to sort through in the aftermath of the Civil War arc], and ‘Vision’s Adventures In Trying To Become a Psychiatrist’ because multiple commenters basically went ‘wow JARVIS really needs therapy, and no one on Earth really is equipped to help Skynet here’ and I remember thinking, “lol yeah, that’s kinda the point, but also that’s a great idea!!!” and had been planning to write something to that effect. Only, things hit the fan in my life not long after, and then burnout on top of that, and next thing I know it’s been years since I last touched this AU but still feel no inclination to do so.
