Gems of Memory

Part One Part Two

( Putting Natasha in charge of training schedules while Steve was incapacitated - in-cap-a-cat-ated? - was a terrible idea. )

Of Whiskey and Whiskers
By: Memory DragonNotes: First of all, if Pepper/Tony is your MCU OTP, then this is probably not the fic for you.  A good half of this fic is dealing with the fall out of their break up.  However, this fic is protesting two things.  The first is that in slash fic, the break up with Pepper either happens long time before (and they are now friends), they break up and Pepper is never seen or heard from again, or they break up and Pepper is more okay with this than Tony is.  Which is all well and good, but I wanted a fic where no, she's also not okay, she doesn't just disappear, and the break up hurts both of them a lot before things can start to get better (which it does, because I like happy endings).  The second thing I protest is the fact that Tony is always turned into a cat.  Again, all well and good (and believe me, I adore Tony as a cat fics.  They are a weakness of mine), but someone else needs to have a turn to be cat-i-fied.  In this case, it is Steve's turn to suffer and be adorable.  I think I've only seen him as a cat once, and that was in Ultimates fic, so obviously this is A Thing and it needed to be rectified.  So I wrote this fic.  Because that's how I roll.

Finally, this is pre-slash, because Tony's not jumping into a new relationship and Steve spent most of the fic as a cat.  However, the potential is there and (rather vaguely) discussed, even if they've settled on friends for now.  So if you are wondering about the relationship tags, it's friends with an understood option for something more later.  In other words, Mem fails at slash yet again and no one is surprised.

( Tony Stark was in the middle of a board meeting when Natasha called. )

wtf?  They only needed two entries on the com.  I didn't add that much editing.  >.>

Part 1 | Part 2

( "Alright, Avengers. You've been dancing for three and a half months now. Which means it's time to put your skills to the test!" )

A Solid Connection
By: Memory DragonNotes: This was originally written for kahn for the Cap-IM Fic Exchange.  The prompt was "Tony and Steve, dancing" and a more general request for team-as-family.  This may have gone overboard with the latter, but hey.  A few things before we start though.

One, Lizzie (Casey in the original posting), 'Victor' (Theodore in the original posting.  Yeah, I totally named him that just to call him Teddy.  XD ), and his gentleman friend all come from another set of fics of mine, It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing.  You do not have to read those fics to understand this one.  Technically, Lizzie is the only OC here (and I sadly couldn't go into her as much as I wanted to since it was an anon posting and a gift fic), with 'Victor' being the Master in disguise from Doctor Who and his gentleman friend being the Third Doctor.  If you are unfamiliar with Who though, no worries.  You don't need to know anything about them and there's no complicated back story for either of them.  I just couldn't resist bringing Lizzie and the Master back for more dancing adventures across time and space, and you can read them like you would most normal OC's.  Just realize only Lizzie is actually mine.

Two, a note on the dance. West Coast Swing is not the swing dance you are thinking of. If you thought Grease and other movies of the sort, you're thinking either East Coast Swing or Jitterbug, or a dance along those lines. West Coast Swing is a completely different dance. If you would like to see what it looks like, look up West Coast Swing on youtube. If you'd like a place to start, here's two videos of Jack and Jill competitions. Jack and Jill basically means you have no idea who your partner is or what music you'll be dancing to until your name gets called and they start the music. There's no choreography and it's all improv, which is what you'd see if you went out to a Westie club. Well, a Westie club that pro dancers are at. Anyway, have a more technical dance video ( http://youtu.be/Y3i6kyLLB2g ) and one video to show the versatility of WCS with music ( http://youtu.be/W1DUvrbrp7U?t=1m11s ).

Three, this mostly came about because while there are some good 'teach Steve to dance' fics out there, none of them quite satisfied the dancer in me.  This was probably an inevitable fic.  Kahn just gave me proper excuse to write it.

Last of all, please enjoy the fic!

( Steve Rogers looked down at his book, trying - and failing - to make sense of the words. )

So I've seen a few people post odds and ends of things they've written at the end of the year.  Mostly things they just never finished.  And I figured why not?  Amy-verse I'll hold back, since I'd like to finish that someday, and I didn't bother looking through my other notebooks to find things, but have two fics I started but didn't finish.

The first one is a crossover of Avengers MCU and The Twelve.  Mostly because The Twelve gave me feels.  Lots of feels.  Curse you, JMS.  But yeah, between the Witness (seriously, just the concept of his character gives you feeeeeeeels), Rockman (That one nearly legitimately made me cry), Captain Wonder (oh, god, the feels with that story line.  Just when you think JMS is done with you, he hits you harder), Master Mind Excello (though admittedly, his feels came late in the game), I would have been sold.  But no.  JMS also made me fall head over heals for the Phantom Reporter, who is all kinds of adorable and needs cuddles.  Especially with his crush on the Black Widow.  And the worst thing is that there is no fic of the Phantom Reporter that I can find, and this makes me a sad, sad panda.  He's got that reporter sort of cynicism with a dosage of JMS romanticism, and it works.  I just... I really fell in love with this character.

Naturally, when I see a lack of something in fandom, I usually set about to fix this.  Sadly, while I already wanted to put the original Black Widow in fic, I also had no idea where to go with it.  So I started writing, so see if something would come to me.  It unfortunately didn't.  But here is the first scene, in case you were interested.

( Fire and Shadow )
------

The second was going to be an epic vampire fic. Instead of the pretty boy toy or hot chick as a vampire, I was having a seven-year-old girl. A seven-year-old girl who was one nasty piece of work, turned into a vampire when she was really young and unable to age physically. She's also brilliant with electronics (on par with Tony) and hell bent on making the Avengers into her play things as she takes over the world. Unfortunately, Tony is immune to her mind control, so she uses him as bait to trap the others and mind controls them. Then she uses them to torture Tony, because she's sadistic like that. I had one scene planned where she has Cap holding her up so that she can drink a terrified Tony's blood. It was going to be fun.

Also, it comes to light (via Coulson after they've been saved) that the little vampire-chick is actually a female version of Tony from another dimension. In her world, Howard Stark hadn't been drunk. So when the vampires came to attack, he went out to fight them instead of staying locked up in the closet, knocked out drunk by Maria who knew such things (his mother came from a long line of vampire hunters and had natural immunity to vampire mind control that she passed on to Tony/Natasha). This caused the vampires to find Maria and little Natasha. Maria they killed, Natasha they turned into a vampire like them, hoping to use her brains. Except Natasha got the better of all of them and killed them in revenge. Then she alternated between murder, ruling the world, and inventing. Tony was not happy to find this out.

The main problem with this was I just wasn't feeling it? I probably could find it if tried re-writing it a few times, but at the time I didn't have the energy for it and I just sort of gave up on it. I might come back to it eventually, I suppose. We'll see. There's not much of this one.

( Ill Met by Moonlight )

----


And yeah, that's basically the two fics.  I might return to them some day.  I'm currently got The Evil Plan I'm working on, but after that I don't think I've got anything grabbing, so I might try one of these again or Amy-verse.  We'll see.  In the mean time, expect an exchange fic from me once the reveals go up on the secret santa.  I've also got the next Amy-verse waiting for me to have energy to edit it, and two fics in Nar's mailbox waiting to be beta'ed, so you'll have fic sometime soon. 

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

( He sank down into one of those uncomfortable chairs, not caring how hard it was. )

So.  I'm not dead.  Life does suck incredibly much right now though, which is why you haven't seen much of me.  Anyway, happy birthday Who!  And have a Avengers BB fic.

Notes: So yup.  I'm an overachiever.  When I write one BB fic that's too team fic for the com, I apparently have a second go and come out with this.  Unsurprisingly it slash fails.  It also has less slash than even my previous attempt did, but the focus is definitely on Steve and Tony this time since I limited myself to only having two characters (Rhodey snuck in for a scene.  I can't say no to Rhodey).

The first thing you should know that the basis for setting this fic in China is taken from the little known Chinese scenes from IM3 that were shown only in China and my memory of a friend translating them for me.  Basically, they followed the Chinese doctor who would operate on Tony for the arc reactor surgery and they set the operation in Beijing.  The second thing you should know is that this fic is entirely too self indulgent with giving Steve and Tony my own experiences in China.    I didn't get everything in there, but let's just say I didn't have Steve's help with my twisted ankle.  Third, this fic came about entirely when I visited the Panda Breeding Research Center for the first time and couldn't stop thinking about Steve fighting while trying to protect a panda, because the cute attacked and didn't give up until it was written.  And finally, no, I won't apologize for the title of the fic.  XD

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

( His hands were bleeding. )

Two of which I made, so they're probably pretty crappy.  But I couldn't resist the Giant Bunny Fiasco or Dummy in a dunce hat.  It kept me amused while I was not thinking about my growing dislike of Panda fic.  Sigh.  Ah, well.  At least I have new shinies. 

So I've written both Steve and Tony in a couple of different ways now, but the Steve in my new Big Bang seems vastly different from my previous Steves.  It's a bit odd.  He's just... bitter, I suppose.  It's post Iron Man 3, which makes Tony more emotionally adjusted than Steve (really, Steve, when you have more issues than Tony, you should get help).  Except Tony's also post-Pepper break up, which leaves him vulnerable.  And Steve is just being a bit of a dick about the whole thing.

He's just... bitter.  I suppose it's because that until Cap 2 comes out, he's kind of left in a limbo of really not fitting in just yet.  And with six months between Avengers and Iron Man 3, I've let him sort of drift and become bitter about it all, rather than whatever Bucky-related fun times the movie has planned.  In fact, he seems to be leaning towards the Cap I see in Ultimates fics, which considering how I tend to avoid Ultimates in general, is a bit odd.

I kind of like this Cap though.  He doesn't take Tony's BS.  He's constantly frustrated with Tony, and it's all the fun I have with Doctor/Master 'I hate you therefore I love you' relationship.  Really, I have a type.  I think I've said this in a chat before, but I'm not sure what I'll ever do if movie-verse Cap and Tony become as good of friends as they are in the comics, because I would have no plots left.  All of my plots are just getting to be friends.  I WILL HAVE NOTHING LEFT.

I suppose I could always just go back to Whovian fandom if that happens, but still.  Where's the fun in that?

So yeah, I've got this odd Ultimates Cap who I have no idea what to do with.  He's kind of entertaining though, especially when he starts getting mentally sassy and sarcastic with Tony.

The main thing is that Cap keeps calling him 'Stark' which is really annoying for me.  For some reason, I can switch between Cap and Steve, but Tony is just Tony.  I have to constantly fix me calling him Tony, and I've still probably missed half of them.  Steve, just give in and call him Tony already.  >.>

Also, I know I said I wasn't going to project on this fic, but I might be totally projecting.  Especially with Tony twisting his ankle. *whistles innocently*

Fic: Childhood is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies Part 3

Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four

( Tony fell asleep curled up next to Bruce on the Quinjet after two hours of excitedly talking about both the plane's engine and the robot he wanted to make. )