#31dofi

It's after a nasty patrol after an Arkham Breakout, maybe one with Joker himself, and Jason has been corralled back to the Batcave. It's a rough transition because on one hand, he's angry as fuck, and on the other, he does want the comfort that his father Batman can provide. One part of him will always be that little kid who believes in Batman.

Alfred is sanitizing one of the wounds Jason got when he snaps backs to reality with a crack, like a rubber band, harsh and quick. He says some choice words, and eventually says "Why do you care so much now when you never cared before?"

They all freeze. Bruce and Alfred because they feel guilt, even if it wasn't true. Tim is ushering Damian away, and Damian, for once, is listening. He knows how to read a room- that he knows intimately. And Jason freezes because he didn't mean to say that. Everything had been going well and he thought, believed, he had put those old hurts behind him. But with seeing the Joker, with the stress of the night, it all came back.

I don't think Bruce deigns that with a response. It's just a tired, defeated, hurt sigh. I don't think he says anything, he just scrubs his hand down his face, shuts down the Batcomputer, and goes upstairs.

It's only Alfred who stays, and Jason feels so small and so hurt underneath Alfred's gaze as he says "I just fu- messed up, didn't I?"

And Alfred sighs, his knees creaking as he stands. And Jason has never noticed before because Alfred's hands are always so steady when he is doing something, but when he is just standing there, they shake with age. And he walks away. Jason feels like he just messed up bad that even Alfred just walked away and part of him shatters because Alfie was always the impartial one, the one comfort he could have no matter how often he acted out. Bruce got frustrated when he was younger, unused to dealing with someone with sharp edges (Dick had sharp edges, but he wasn't made from them, not truly), and Alfred could step in and talk Jason down in a heartbeat. And he covers that anxiety with anger, clenching his fists as it turns around and around in him until he's angry, when Alfred's soft steps come back and he looks back up.

He's holding a shoe box almost reverently. "You are cared for more than you will ever know, Master Jason." And he hands the box to him, Jason taking it with major confusion as Alfie smooths his hair back, a cheek pat. "I will have tea waiting for you upstairs when you decide to come join us."

He's gone before Jason can snark that he wouldn't join them and he's left holding the box, feeling horribly confused.

He has half the mind to set the box aside and just walk out. Nothing in there can calm him down, he is sure of this, but he's also curious and he will see his curiosity to the end of the road.

So he takes the lid off the box, surprised it isn't dusty. It's definitely dented, as if it's used often, but it's not dusty. The box is too light to be a pair of shoes, but he's still surprised to find pieces of paper, envelopes, sticky notes.

He picks up the one on top and sees, in a handwriting that is familiar to him because it is on half of the reports, five words. 'I miss you, Little Wing' and he pauses, brows furrowing and stomach dropping. Because he is suddenly very scared of this box, more scared than he has been in a long time.

He sets the note aside, setting aside scraps of paper that say similar things. 'I love you, Jason' and 'I saw a bird I think you'd like'.

There are papers in there, and when he unfolds one, it's paragraphs upon paragraphs. 'To Jason', 'Love, Rena'. His eyes dart to the corner of the paper to see a date that is just a few weeks after his death, and his breath stutters.

His eyes scan the words, reading, consuming, and yet not processing. He reads the letter once, twice, reading the words 'I wish we had more time together' and 'I am going to miss you so much' and even a 'We started a book in English I think you'd like. I've been reading it aloud for you.'

He folds it up and sets it aside carefully, his jaw trembling. He thinks he knows what the box is now and there are so many more letters.

Jason takes a deep breath, moving to the floor and leaning against the bed/cot he was sitting against because he knows his limits and he's unsure he will stay upright. He doesn't want to read these, but he's compelled to grab the next one.

He reads more and more words form his classmates, impersonal ones, ones who wanted to hop on the train of writing to the Wayne-Boy-Who-Died, but there are some from the few friends he made, friends that he forgot existed. Teachers who said he had such a bright future ahead of him. Letters from people he didn't think would ever miss him or would ever notice he was gone, people he didn't remember and who he didn't know, but whose letters say that he helped them with knowing they'd be missed, that the day he smiled at them in the halls was a hard one and they think about it often, or the recommendations he had for books became some of their favourites.

Little things that he didn't think were important but others cared so much about.

There are some from the Justice League, from Selina, from the Titans.

Interspersed were letters from Dick, dozens upon dozens, but mostly notes. Little things. A scribbled 'Just heard a song I think you'd like.' and 'There's a new ice cream place that just opened up. I wish I could take you.' There are very few long form letters from Dick, but when there are, there are always tear stains, they always devolve into apologies, that he wished he was there for him, that he wished he was nicer, that he wished he could have been a better older brother.

There are only a couple from Alfred, one for each of his birthdays and one for the day they buried him. 'I have urged Master Bruce to do the same, but I'm unsure if he will. Nevertheless, I will always write to you.' He writes what's new around the manor, complaining about the prices of items, knowing Jason would complain with him. They're warm and showered with love.

There are even a few from the Pretender, from before he was Robin and when Timothy Drake was just a boy. 'I'm so sorry, I need to help and I know you wouldn't want him to kill himself in his grief.' 'You once said Robin is magic, I think that was you. Jason Todd is magic.' 'I promise I'm keeping him safe. I'm doing my best.' And it's Tim, mourning his hero, doing his best to keep up his legacy, and there's anger but so much less of it at seeing the scrawl of a boy who was so desperate to keep Jason, and Batman, alive.

He hasn't cried yet. He feels numb with everything he's read, and he's surrounded by papers and scraps of notes and sticky notes and letters, all folded carefully back to how they were. And there's only one letter left in the box and it's-

The last one in the box, the first one placed in there, is from Bruce. It's a letter, his name written on the front in the most Bruce handwriting possible and he doesn't even hesitate to open it, despite how his hands shake. He doesn't know how long he's been sitting there, what time it was, if it was morning yet or if it hadn't been as long as it felt and-

'My dearest Jaylad,' has the dam in his chest breaking. He sets his head back against the cot from where he had been curled over, jaw and chest trembling as he did his best to keep the tears at bay. But everything he's felt recently has just been let loose and he realizes that he never grieved for his own death.

And he sits there, the words he's read running around his mind, and every time he thinks he is calm, he think about Clark's poetic English major at work or the fact that Dick felt so much grief or the classmates he didn't know but still had stories about him regardless or Bruce's 'My dearest Jaylad' and he is sobbing once more.

He isn't able to stop for a while, but he's finally able to look down at the letter Bruce wrote, the only one, and he reads it, the words swimming in front of him.

It talks about how they first met, the fact that Bruce only goes to that specific Alley on the anniversary when his parents died, how it felt like a miracle, an omen, when there was an orphan kid stealing his tires. And the way Jason fought, so full of life, it brought a certain happiness and pride he didn't know he could feel on that day.

And it talks about everything they did, how much life and joy Jason brought to the manor, how nice it felt having a son in his house again, how easy it felt to have him around. How he's sorry for accusing him, he wish he was there for him.

It's stained with tears and things are scribbled out and words are smudged. Pens are changed multiple times and there's an inkblot on one of the papers of the three page letter and it's the most honest, most raw, Bruce has ever been.

'I don't- I don't think I can write another one of these, chum. I don't want to mourn you. A father should never outlive his son's death and I don't know how long I will be able to.'

Jason is sobbing by the end of it again, hand over his mouth, curled around the letter. He's hugging it to his chest and reading those words over and over again, reading the fact that he's loved, over and over again. It's opposite from how he first started crying. It's loud and messy and he feels like a little kid who needs to be held again instead of the adult who can cry silently. He feels vulnerable as if he's just been opened up and he cries and sobs until there are no more tears even if he can't breathe.

He stays curled up for so long. He stays until he can breathe and he slowly folds the crumpled letter back up, puts the rest of the letters and the notes in the box, and holds it so carefully, before he heads upstairs.

He brings the shoebox up with him. It feels so heavy, as if he is holding the entire world in his hand, but he feels so light, despite the fact that it's hard to keep his eyes open and the way his limbs are so heavy.

Alfred is there, reading a book by the candlelight despite the fact that, out the window, the sun is starting to peak through, streaking pinks and oranges across the lightening sky.

"Where was it?" His voice is croaky, wretched, but he can't find it in himself to care.

"Your Memorial was never just a suit, Master Jason."

Amy And Rouge get coffee together often, usually followed by a girl’s day out on the town. Today, Amy mentions how she’s no longer disastrously crushing on Sonic. No, no, now she’s crushing on Sonic and Shadow. It’s a disaster, really, it’s going to ruin her life.

And Rouge snorts, of course, because boys are fun until they’re drama.

And Amy’s prattling on about she doesn’t even know how she managed to fall for both, or how either of them would feel about that, or how she was supposed to choose, anyway? So, Rouge cuts her off there. “Just make them do the work for you.” When amy is understandably confused, Rouge explains. Casually let it drop to each of the boys that the either is planning to court Amy. Their own competitive nature will do the rest. They one up each other constantly just to earn the title of who would be the better boyfriend.

Its an added bonus that Amy would end up getting spoiled by both in the process.

Amy asks if that would be cruel, and Rogue just shrugs.

They call it the Blackout, but really, it was a lot more than that. It started as a blackout, and then everything else hit the fan pretty fast. A solar EMP fried all of humanity’s technology, and soon after, through either correlation or coincidence, many regions received “The Big Ones”. That is, seismic activity that had been predicted for decades and broke most records that humanity had ever known.

And mere days before this happened, a scientist predicted it. Well, plenty did, but one in particular was named Arlin. He was a part of a group that called themselves the Black Rose Collective, and they’d been researching a variety of natural disasters that had the potential to wipe out humanity. With this information, Arlin fled, taking his 9 year old son with him, in attempts to prepare for an extinction level event.

Chip survived, but he never saw Arlin again. They’d been separated shortly before the Blackout, and Chip was unable to find Arlin afterwards.

15 years later, he’s still looking. He’s found hints. Rumors of someone calling themselves the Black Rose, a set of coordinates that he just cannot seem to figure out for the life of him, and a coin gifted to him by his father.

Survivors of the Blackout were scarce, but somehow he’d managed to find a woman named Jay, on a mission to find herself after the loss of her sister, and a man named Gillion, who’s main priority was taking care of his 6 year old daughter, Pretzel. The four of them agree to travel together, as finding other survivors is rare and usually dangerous. As it turns out, they’re all heading west, anyway.

They grow close over months of traveling, and tracking Chip’s lost family. They pick up others, too, a 10 year old boy named Ollie, and a woman named Ensa.

Eventually, they do find the camp of survivors that they’re looking for. The Black Rose.

They find the leaders and all three are shocked to see that their sisters- Lizzie, Ava, Edyn- all preciously thought dead, were alive and working together to save people. When Chip excitedly asked about Arlin, the only news to be had is bad. But the group they’d found themselves in fits well into the camp, and they fall into a sort of routine with the others, catching up and caring for one another.

Following their invitation, the Riptide Pirates find themselves on a dense island jungle that’s seemingly abandoned. Soon, they happen across a large paradise city, seemingly too good to be true. Upon meeting the Baron of this island, Baron Omatsuri, and his sentient pet shoulder flower, the crew is challenged to the “Trials of Hell”, to which Gillion JUMPS at the opportunity without hearing the Baron explain any further.

The first challenge is to catch a goldfish with a paper net, meaning you must be fast and efficient in your fishing. However, the game is skewed out of the crew’s favor, as the goldfish turns out to be both a massive sea beast and the pet of their opponent. Despite the odds, the crew does manage to defeat their opponent by working together to capture the goldfish.

The crew then proceed to an attempt to leave, following a map through a forest that seems to be trapping them in, not allowing them to find their way back to the Albatross. They come across an arena filled with the inhabitants of the island- people with leaves sprouting from the tops of their heads- cheering them onto another challenge. This time, the Baron explains a game of speed boats and ring tossing. The game requires 4 of the riptide pirates, Gillion, Earl, Jay, and Drey, to compete against 4 of the island’s inhabitants, with 2 people per boat. While this challenge is happening, Chip, Queen, and Griffin wander off to explore the island, while Ollie stays behind to cheer for their crew mates- more on that in a moment. Throughout the competition, various struggles begin to drive wedges between the competing Riptide pirates, rising tensions and creating arguments.

Chip meets a man (whom I’m substituting for Duke D Dukum) that warns him about the island, implying that the island is not what it seems, and that the Baron is not to be trusted. Griffon discovers a mass graveyard outside the city limits, and while exploring further, finds a weathered and worn wanted poster depicting the Baron and all of the inhabitants of the island, labeling them the Red Arrow Pirates. Only, everyone in the poster looks exactly as they are, except for the Baron, who looks decades younger. The Baron then discovers Griffon and shoots him in the heart. Meanwhile, Queen chooses to check out the hotel pool, where she runs into their opponent from the previous challenge. They have a chat about the island and the Baron, where Queen also learns the island inhabitants’ pirate history.

After the second challenge, the crew regroups, minus Griffon, and the Baron announces a dinner party, featuring an ice(?) skating rink style hibachi. Old man Earl proclaims that he can cook anything better than the Chef and it devolves into a cook-off between the two. Jay happens to run into the same guy Queen had run into, and he offhandedly mentions how the Baron could beat Captain Rose if they were to meet in battle. This is obviously confusing to Jay, as Rose supposedly died a decade before. When she tells him this, he seems to get confused, and he makes a realization that ages his body a decade, becoming a rotting corpse in front of her. Meanwhile, Drey is chatting with the DJ, whom he gets into an argument with. The argument ends with the DJ mauling Drey where he stands. We cut once again to Queen, who is now joined by Ollie, as they go look for a flower that’s covering the island in their map, but that they haven’t seen nor heard of. Instead, they haven upon a ship graveyard on the side of the mountain. At the tip of the mountain, a headless flower stem rises, more ginormous than any plant either of them have ever seen before. They find a ship in the graveyard marked with the name of the Red Arrow Pirates. Here, the Baron finds them, and they follow the fate of Griffon.

The remaining Riptide Pirates (now just albatrio and Earl) regroup and attempt to figure out what’s happening and where their crew mates are. Their planning is interrupted when the Baron reappears and announces the third and final challenge. Every inhabitant of the island is given a weapon and instruction to shoot to kill. Earl is gunned down first, followed by Jay and finally Gill, who urges Chip to keep running and find the rest of the crew. Chip is saved by Duke D Dukum through a vast tunnel network spanning the entire island.

I do need to rewatch the movie so this part is a little splotchy atm but in short, the Baron is feeding Chip’s crew to his shoulder pet, which is also the stem that Queen snd Ollie discovered. Chip watches as his friends start to become absorbed into the flower and a fight between Chip and the Baron occurs. As Gillion, the last to be fed to the flower, is absorbed, the flower on the Baron’s shoulder morphs into a terrifying amalgamation of Chip’s friends, still sprouting from the Baron’s shoulder. The giant stem growing from the mountain turns into millions of Arrows that rain onto Chip. He is at the brink of death, but manages to set the arrows embedded into him ablaze, and send a final Arrow (using Jays bow) through the flower, which erupts in a disgusting heap of ooze. A second arrow is fired at the Baron, finishing the fight, with a barely standing Chip as the victor.

As he collapses, a revived Gillion catches him. The rest of his friends are alive and well, with seemingly no memory of the events taking place on the island.

May P.o.V.

May learning her nephew is Spider-Man, she goes through the terror of him throwing himself into danger with every chance he gets, they have a heartfelt conversation about Peter sacrificing himself, how he can't stop, not when he knows people are getting hurt. May hugging Peter close to her, his head tucked under earth hers even though he's been getting taller and it's difficult to do now, but he still slots there perfectly; he always will. He's basically her son after all. And she says "You are the best kid I could ever ask for."

What she doesn't say is he's the best kid ever. Not just the kindest or the sweetest, but the most selfless, the best person to exist. Because instead of goofing off with his powers like other teenagers would have done, like she would have done at his age, he goes out and protects others. Brave. Selfless.

He goes to bed, she gives him a forehead kiss, lingering, kind of like a prayer to keep him safe, and she tries to go to bed for a bit, but her brain is not letting her. She never kept up with the vigilante news, never had the time, didn't think it would ever apply to her, and now she's regretting it.

So she gets out her beat up, slow as all hell laptop and searches up Spider-Man and goes through the news articles, the social media posts, anything and everything she could get her hands on.

And for the most part, besides the crazy rumors that he's actually a spider or that he's an alien sent from space to gain new York's trust, it's all heartwarming mentions. (Besides the Daily Bugle calling her nephew a menace, a scoundrel. Once she gets past the righteous anger she feels, she realizes in the comments it gets a lot of clicks, even if just to defend Spider-Man. And she spends a bit of time just scrolling through those comments.)

It's all "Spider-Man helped walk me down the street after I got drunk one night, made sure I got to my friends safely" and "he kept my kids entertained while I had to call the locksmith" and "he saved me from a mugging" and "Spider-Man helped me carry my groceries up to the fifth floor" and on and on it goes. All little things, some more dangerous than the others and she has to remind herself that Spider-Man, that Peter, is okay, is in the other room.

And she's about to go to bed, feels comfortable with the knowledge that her nephew is safe, when she finds the bad stuff.

Some redditor leaks government documents, reports Rhodey wrote, about Spider-Man being in Germany when the Avengers split. And once something is on the internet, it spreads, so she's able to get a full quote, she looks into the Accords.

She curses Stark's name to hell and back.

Peter gets up for school and checks in on her, a quick conversation. She's acting off and she knows Peter can tell and wants to ask, but he hesitates and she ushers him out the door.

"Are you sure you're okay?"

"I'm fine, promise. Be safe, okay?"

"Of course! I- I'll probably patrol after school today. If that's okay?"

And she melts, because she knows he wouldn't if she asked and he looks so scared that she will say no, so she just forces a smile upon her face and says "Or course. Larb you."

And he beams like he was just gifted the world and hugs her and says "I larb you, Aunt May." And then rushes out the door because her kid can never sit still and he was late.

And she returns back to her research on her one day off. She makes herself some coffee, burns the toast because someone knocked it to the wrong setting, turns off the smoke alarm, opens up a window, and moves to the kitchen table for her research.

At some point she remembers that Peter said he got in a fight with a guy named Steve after that Germany trip. And she connects the dots to it being Steve Rogers, fucking Captain America.

At some point, she comes across the Ferry incident. She remembers it out of the blue and goes to search it up. There's news footage covering the wreckage, interviewing those who were on the tour, and she is terrified. 

(I don't think there is enough people to know about, or would tell about, Spider-Man crash-landing a plane in Long Island. I think that is safe.)

But she sits there, thinking for a moment. Because Stark took him to Germany, Stark gave him a new suit, Stark bailed him out of the ferry incident if what people are saying is true.

She's getting dressed and gathering her purse before she can put too much thought behind it. 

And then she pauses because she has no idea how to get to where Stark is. He may not even be in the country, for all she knows.

But, he did give her his phone number, way back when everything was just a fake internship over a year ago. She hadn't had to use it, not yet, because Peter had been so good at communication, telling her that he was going to his internship and that he would be back before a specific time, kept her updated on certain things Stark said or what kind of projects he was doing.

And some part of it must be true because he had never been a good liar, but he must have been good enough to hide what the true internship meant from her.

So she's standing at her door, dressed, swiping through her contacts, feeling kind of foolish for just standing there, but she's also on her third cup of coffee and no sleep and she's powering through on worry and fear and anger. 

She hasn't been this angry in years. She gets frustrated, she gets annoyed, but angry? Since before she met Ben, when her best friend at the time got into a car accident and was in critical condition and their other friend, an acquaintance, didn't seem to care. (Or perhaps fucking Skip Westcott, but I will get too angry myself if I think about him too much and I never want him near one of my fics. She would get angry, so terribly angry, there, and for a good reason. But this fic isn't about him.)

But now, the dial tone of Stark's own personal cell against her ear, she is shaking in anger.

"Hey, May, didn't think you were ever gonna call. Y'know-"

She doesn't let him finish his thought. "How soon can you get here?"

And there's this pause, and she can hear him stop whatever he's doing on the other side. "What's the matter? What happened? Are you and Peter okay?"

She can hear the worry in his voice, the thin-laced concern that he doesn't bother to hide behind any of the jokes he is known for. 

That's the only reason why she says, "We're fine. I just need to talk to you."

She doesn't hear the sigh of relief, but he sounds a lot lighter the next time he speaks, if not still wary. "You found out, didn't you?"

A sardonic laugh is ripped from her before she can stop it. "What do you think?"

"I can be there in an hour."

He hangs up and she's left with silence. She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and goes to make more coffee so they both can survive this conversation.

He knocks on their apartment door fifty minutes later and she opens it to see him holding a bottle of wine and a Tony Stark (TM) smile on his face.

She ushers him in, she takes the bottle, and she has the sudden urge and mind to fight him. How dare he bring a gift for her, as if to sweeten her up, to try to get on her good side? 

She sets it aside, tries to forget about it, and sits back at her kitchen table. Starks stands there awkwardly for a moment before she gestures for him to sit. And then they're in silence for a good few moments, May trying to find her words, Stark opening his mouth, only to pause and rethink what he's about to say. They both should have something, it's been fifty minutes, and Stark has had an extra year to think about what he could say for if May ever found out, but here they are, both struggling for words.

Stark's the one who breaks the silence first. "So, are we gonna talk about it or just sit in silence? 'Cause you're the one who called me and said we needed to talk and-"

May holds up a hand and he silences himself immediately. In any other situation, it would be comical. But it wasn't. She didn't think there was any humor found in this situation.

She starts from the beginning, then. A year ago.

"You lied to me. You got Peter to lie to me. You told me he got an internship! Not- not going to Germany to fight against the Avengers. What if he got hurt? What if he died? What would you have told me?"

"I wouldn't have let it come to that-"

"Shut it, Stark. I don't need your excuses." Stark's mouth clicks shut. "What I need to know is why you thought it was smart to bring my nephew into battle without telling his guardian. I thought you were the smartest man on the earth, but instead you brought a fourteen year old into battle.

"Or the ferry. He risked his and so many other's lives for God knows what reason, and yet you still didn't contact me even though you were there. And all Peter told me was that he lost the goddamned internship! Was that even a real thing? Or was that just a code for him to go out as Spider-Man?"

She pauses, waiting for him to answer. He shifts, not exactly a fidget, but enough where she could tell he was uncomfortable. "It wasn't at first, but after Homecoming, those trips to the compound were real."

She blinks, confused. "Homecoming? What happened during homecoming? I know Liz's dad was a supervillain but that-" dawning realization, feeling faint. Her mug of coffee has cooled down but she still clings to that like a life-preserver. 

(Briefly explains the whole Homecoming, Vulture scenario)

"And you still didn't tell me??"

"He asked me not to!"

"He's fifteen and putting his life in danger, he doesn't get to make those kinds of decisions! He doesn't get to decide that I don't get to know!

"What if he died out there and I found out my nephew was Spider-Man from the news? From a social media post because people can't keep their noses out of things? I would be one of the last people to know."

"You wouldn't."

"How do you know??"

"His suit, it would let both of us know. I'm alerted immediately for any tiny scrapes he gets on patrol. If he got anything fatal, or anything that should have sent him to the hospital, it would also alert you, my promise to him be damned.

"I was trying to keep him safe while keeping my promise to him. If I told you and he found out, who's to say he would trust either of us?"

"He would. You wanna know why? Because he's a good kid. You shouldn't have kept this from me."

(Maybe there's more conversation, I think they both think they're in the right and, for the most part, both of them are to an extent. It's a bunch of what-ifs and they're talking in circles and it's stressing them both out. Neither of them have slept and May is pissed and Tony is just trying to do his best to keep everything civil, but he also feels that guilt.)

Until: "Do you want me to stay away from him?"

And May deflates because...yeah, kind of, she does. This is the man who has consistently lied to her about her nephew, has dragged him into dangerous situations, who is letting him keep being spider-man despite him only being fifteen and-

She's doing that too. She knows she can't stop a Parker when they put their mind to something, and she'd rather know what he's doing and if he's been hurt than Peter tried to hide it.

Not to mention, Peter had been genuinely sad when he had lost the 'internship', had been more excited in this past year since he had lost his uncle. And maybe he was healing, or maybe it was him spending time with Stark. 

So she crosses her arms, more of a hug to herself than any sort of defense, and says "No, no I don't. He would be devastated."

And she knows Stark would have been too because there's a tightness in his shoulders that releases just a bit. 

"But," she adds, and that stiffness comes back, and he's looking at her with such seriousness in his eyes, "you have to tell me everything. I don't care if he asks, pleads, begs you not to, you tell me. That is my kid and I can't just- I can't not know, or else I'll be staying up every night never knowing if he's okay and I can't- I can't do that." Not after she lost Ben, not after she lost Mary and Richard. She can't lose her nephew, too.

And Stark stares at her with an understanding in his eyes and complete seriousness, and nods. "Full disclosure from now on, that I can do."

And they've reached an agreement and the tension is settled and it isn't like the tension in the room from before. She still feels unsettled and she hasn't slept and she goes to ask him to leave before-

May sees the bottle of wine he brought and she pauses. Maybe, as an olive branch, as a sign of good faith, that she doesn't...hate him. "Would you like to stay for a drink?"

Stark blinks, clearly surprised, before he smirks, "Why, May, are you--"

"Don't even finish that thought, Stark."

And he raises his hands in the universal giving up sign, "Shutting up now."

Duration: Dec 1st-31st

Objective: Come up with a new fic idea/premise every day

I’ll also be posting all of my ideas under the #31DoFI tag here, and everyone is more than welcome to use the same tag if you decide to participate.

You obviously don’t have to actually write any of the ideas if you don’t want. I’m probably going to hold a poll for the most popular of my own ideas and I’ll write the winner, but the whole point of this is to basically throw as much creative spaghetti at the wall as possible, that way I can get EVERY idea out, regardless of how “good” the ideas are.

It is very rare to find your soulmates. James and Steve are rarities, even more so for finding their other half so young. It is not explicitly romantic, it is not explicitly platonic, but whatever those two have is beyond definition and beyond words. 

James has been in pain since he could remember. Stomach pain, back pain, being short of breath. It went on and on. His parents took him to the doctor and, as far as they could tell, there was nothing wrong with him. 'His soulmate,' they had said, 'and a very sickly one at that. You may need to prepare him for that pain.' It was rare to meet your soulmate, but you would still feel them die.

But, faint and tired and sick, he never felt that all-consuming loss of missing a part of himself. And he overcomes it. It's only part of his soulmate's pain. So he gets a job to help support his mother and his sister. And sometimes his pain is worse, but for the most part, he's learned to tune it out. And everything is going well!

Except, well, the fact that his soulmate keeps getting into fights, seemingly, and losing. Which is a fucking pain. He could go his entire life without knowing what a boot to the ribs feels like, but apparently his soulmate is addicted to the feeling.

Which is why, when he's walking home from his "job" at ten (from my five minutes of Google research while at work, child labor was still very prominent and, in fact, ramped up in the 1920s/1930s. However, apparently New York had laws that children under the age of fourteen could not work for money. If I write this, I would go more in depth in the history, do more research, but for now, that's all we're getting.)

But he's walking home from his job at ten or eleven and he sees a small kid in an alley standing up to others and he goes to help him out. He knows how it feels to be fucking kicked and he only knows part of that pain. 

(I like to think that Steve was protecting a dog. Maybe that's cliche, maybe not, but that's how I imagine it. He's absolutely allergic to it as well.)

So he helps this kid out, and it isn't difficult to do so. The other kids are older than they are, but they're also cowards. 

And they end up leaving, turning tail and running, and both James and the kid are bruised and maybe that's why James won't notice until later that he's bruised in places he wasn't hit. Or maybe he won't notice them at all, just assumes it happened when he was distracted. 

"I could have handled it." And James glances down at this skinny kid who looks six and indignant and he snorts.

"Sure you could. Come on, let's get you home."

The dog ran away during the fight. James learns the kid- Steve, Steve Rogers- lives in the same block as him. He learns he's turning nine soon, and James teases him that he looks like he's six. Small. 

I am not sure how they figure out how they're soulmates, if not during that fight, but once they do, they become nigh inseparable. They follow each other to school and class and jobs and church. They hear that the war breaks out together and Steve starts talking about wanting to sign up, just like his dad did.

(I think it would be very rare if you found your soulmate and then willingly put yourself into danger. I think it's a bit taboo, even, to do so, in this world. It sucks to hurt a stranger, it's almost impossible to hurt someone you love.)

And Bucky (because he's Bucky now, not James. He hasn't been James since Steve found out his middle name) is terrified because Steve would find a way, of course he would find a way. And he wants to stay as far away from war as possible, wants to stay as far away from danger and the fight. And call him a coward, but he doesn't see the courage in wanting to go out and fight.

He laughs, still, tells Steve he can feel his pain and that the army won't take someone who is always sick. Steve sticks his nose in the air and just says "They'll take me."

Months later, Bucky gets his draft letter. He lies to Steve that he signed up, and he's shipped off to boot camp and war and doing his best to not get hurt so he doesn't inconvenience Steve.

At some point, he notices he doesn't feel that same sickness, that same soreness, that follows him around, and is in the middle of writing a letter when he and his entire infantry gets captured. Then, he's only focusing on doing his best not to get singled out, to not get hurt. 

He somehow still gets singled out. Maybe he protects someone, maybe not, but he gets chosen to be injected with the knock-off serum and it's icy-hot and the only thing he wishes before he loses himself to the pain is that it doesn't hurt Steve as much.

(An interlude of some sort! Continuation, what we know happens. Steve doesn't feel Bucky die, doesn't feel that overwhelming, gaping maw of grief that people talk about. He doesn't feel shock beyond seeing his soulmate fall from that train, but it doesn't hit him and he is convinced Bucky isn't dead. But that's what everyone says, they're always convinced their soulmate isn't dead. He'll learn to grieve, he'll learn to move on.)

Canon happens. Steve crashes the plane in the ice, he is frozen for seventy years, he is thawed.

He thinks, for the longest time, that the lingering cold he feels is just leftover from being in the ice for so long. He thinks he'll never be warm again. And maybe this is the gnawing grief people talk about. The one that sticks around. Even if Bucky had survived, he wouldn't have lived this long.

And then one night, he's warm. He's warm and he feels like he's been slapped and he sits up from his bed so quickly he feels sick. And he waits. And waits. And he's waiting for days before there's a pain against his shoulder like he's been shoved down onto gravel. And he knows Bucky is alive.

I like to think this is between the two years of being woken up and the avengers, so he doesn't have a lot of resources, if any. If he did, it would be SHIELD and he would trust them, and then HYDRA would get ahold of the fact that he knows James Barnes is alive. 

I don't think he could, or would, find Bucky before he would in canon. I think Fury would promise him resources if he joined the Avengers, otherwise he wouldn't stop his search. Maybe a "There needs to be an Earth for when you find him" or something like that from Fury. But Steve wouldn't find him until he does in canon.

Steve feels cold again. He feels pain. And every waking thought is filled with the fact that Bucky is alive. He's alive and he's in pain when he is not cold. 

I think in the Winter Soldier mindset, he takes no notice of the pain Steve lives through. Either that or it's so connected to his feelings/his sense of self that it basically always breaks him out of the brainwashing. But that's not dramatic enough for me. Maybe HYRDRA found a way to neutralize the soulmate effect, maybe the Winter Soldier is so out of it he just doesn't feel it. Who knows?