annefiction

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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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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?”

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.

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.