the deep moans round with many voices

As always, here is the link to the current ficathon, if you want to come play too. :)

(Yes, I know that two of these are actually four-sentence fics. Shush. My struggle with structural limitations is an open secret.)

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( 7. ) For anonymous: Inception, Ariadne/Arthur, Two drifters, off to see the world, written 12/8/17 [AO3 version]

each day a new and different sun (175 words)

"Columbia or Madagascar?" Arthur asks as he leans over Ariadne's drafting table and obscures her Escher-inspired garden maze (nothing serious, just keeping her hand in between jobs) with his forearms, sleeves shoved carelessly upward to reveal tantalizing swathes of skin.

Ariadne taps her pencil against his knuckles as she considers -- they have been spending a lot of time in Paris this year, and while it's nice to have somewhere to come home to, she's been getting restless and ready for a change -- but she doesn't particularly care what horizon they travel toward so long as they pick up and go; and so she shrugs and says, "Which job has more interesting details, more functional teammates, and less chance of us getting shot?"

Arthur blinks, and then smiles: "I won't presume to judge what you'd find most interesting, but I think our chances of getting shot or stuck with incompetent coworkers are fairly low in both cases, because I was actually proposing a vacation; we can certainly afford it, and after all, we never did finish our honeymoon."

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( 8. ) For iawenbemerry: MCU, Hawkeye +/ Black Widow, amends, written 12/9/17 [AO3 version]

the journey of a thousand miles (250 words)

There's nothing Natasha can do directly for Clint, not while the fallout of Vienna, Berlin, and Leipzig is still fresh and every eye trained to see through shadows is watching for her movements, wondering which way she'll jump now she's cut free from any organization.

Instead, she leaves ciphered border-crossing instructions in one of the electronic dead drops Laura has access to; anonymously mails a set of false passports (Laura Ingalls and her children Carter, Layla, and Peter) to a suspiciously innocuous heritage seed company's post office box; rents a modest corporate jet through three shell companies and a half dozen aliases that ultimately trace back to Stark Industries; and files a flight plan from Council Bluffs to Regina.

When Tony tracks her to a Tim Horton's in Saskatoon three days later, still fuming over her refusal to block Steve and Barnes from taking off for Siberia, Natasha pushes a coffee and doughnut across the table and says, before he can get a word out, "I don't know where any of them are; yes, that was the point; no, I won't help you find them," because while she won't regret the side she chose -- the Accords are a hideous botch and won't stand up to the first round of legal challenges, but some regulation is both practically and ethically necessary and Steve's headfirst stubbornness wasn't going to win any leverage over the people drafting the treaties and laws -- she does regret leaving Clint without a partner, and running decoy for his family's escape is how she begins to make amends.

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( 9. ) For runespoor7: Naruto, Naruto/Sasuke/Sakura, someday, together, we'll shine, written 12/10/17 [AO3 version]

makes the dream work (175 words)

Sakura reaches the valley's rim just in time to shout and send both boys' final strikes awry in startlement; when the dust and shock of the explosions clear, she trips her way down the cliff to where they lie prone and bleeding, and does her best, with stolen supplies and only basic academy training, to bind the wide, abraded stretch of Sasuke's shoulder and the matching deep and half-burned wound in Naruto's side.

"I won't come back," Sasuke says as he pushes himself to his feet, swaying with pain and fatigue; "I can find training from somebody else instead of Orochimaru, I can ignore the curse seal and find a different kind of power, but I can't stay in Konoha and I have to leave before the next retrieval team catches up."

"I know," Sakura agrees, as she washes the evidence of Sasuke's determination from her hands in the river, and then, before she can continue, Naruto opens his eyes and finishes for her: "But we're a team, you asshole, and we won't let you leave alone."

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( 10. ) For anonymous: Any, any, there is nothing better than sitting in the branches of a giant pine tree and watching the sunrise, written 12/12/17 [AO3 version]

the good of your stars and trees (250 words)

"Explain to me again why it was so vitally important to climb a tree in the dead of night instead of doing something sensible like sleeping off Ino and Kaiba's ridiculous overkill idea of a party, or even running last-minute security scenarios for your investiture," Sasuke grumbled as he picked a bit of sap off the cuff of his shirt.

Naruto tossed a pine cone at Sasuke's forehead and said, "It's nostalgic, obviously; tree-climbing was like the first time we all got along and had fun as a team, and this is my last night of freedom from bureaucracy, so if I want to go stargazing and watch the sunrise with my teammates from the best vantage point in Konoha, I'm going to go stargazing and watch the sunrise with you guys -- so there, Hokage's orders!"

"You're not Hokage for another eight hours, and if you don't both shut up and let me undo my hangover in peace, I swear I will strip you naked halfway through the investiture and neither of you will ever live it down," Sakura said flatly from where she lay prone one branch up, but she reached down to thread her fingers gently through both Naruto and Sasuke's hair instead of any gesture to back up her threat; Naruto hummed wordlessly in his throat and pushed up into the contact, and even Sasuke deigned to close his eyes and smile like the flicker of a falling star.

They watched night fade into morning together.

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( 11. ) For ama_ranth_827: Any, Any, I platonically want to have sex with you. No big deal., written 12/12/17 [AO3 version]

like a thunderbolt (175 words)

As she withdrew her sparking hand from the guts of the last member of the unexpected perimeter patrol, ripping out a segment of the sucker's spine for good measure, Nebula turned and said, "Once we finish retrieving the rest of the Guardians from this pathetic excuse for a prison, I wish to platonically engage in sexual intercourse with you; I'm told that Ravagers are frequently experienced in such matters and I've had no luck finding other partners to practice on."

Kraglin's mouth dropped open; Yondu's arrow, thus bereft of guidance, continued its last trajectory and plowed straight through a stone guard tower in a moderately impressive explosion -- which of course defeated the whole damn purpose of sneaking in and silencing the patrol squad before they could raise alarms, fuck his life.

"Afterwards, you can attempt another explanation of why some people find hats aesthetically pleasing," Nebula added, and, hefting her newly acquired lightning canon onto one implausibly slender shoulder, strode toward the still-smoking gap in the ancient Kree fortress as if a full-on frontal assault had always been the plan.

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( 12. ) For anonymous: Any, any, ochre's dust, vermillion too, cobalt crushed, the purest blue, a gram of gold leaf for the border, written 12/16/17 [AO3 version]

a language all nations understand (375 words)

Note: This is Narnia fanfic, but pretty tenuously -- it features two OCs in a region we never actually see in canon. Still fanfic, though! The universe is neat that way. :)

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Sechembaris squinted through her close-work glasses at the finished page: green penstemon vines spiraled up the left margin, extending delicate tendrils between paragraphs and words to bloom in pink and scarlet flowers, graced here and there by the blue orchard bees of southwestern Calormen (much missed, here in the Seven Isles, though honeybees and bumblebees had their consolations) and one rufous hummingbird in bold crimson orange, and the whole framed by an intricate latticework gold border, made deliberately imperfect by one omitted line in the upper right corner, as a courtesy to the gods: truly an effort worthy of her father's best training and sure to nourish the eyes and souls of all who gazed upon its beauty.

She set aside her gold leaf stamp, pushed the glasses up her forehead, and leaned back in her cushioned chair to stretch the kinks out of her shoulders and wrists; "Ten pages left on my end and I think my hand may twist into permanent cramps if I work any more today; renew my spirit with a reminder of how much the Archen king is paying for this anniversary gift?" she called toward her sister's end of their workroom.

"Half a normal year's profit," Nazileen called back without turning, a fine-point brush held delicately between her fingers, "more than enough to buy this shop and the upstairs rooms entire and thus save both on rent and on worry over our landlady's whims; did I not say in Ifayyapura, O my sister and my other self, that while the North is a land benighted in the eyes of both gods and poets, their gold is as good as any other and rarity makes all talents shine bright as diamonds scattered in dust?"

"I remember that distinctly, just as I remember our father's debts and your unwanted suitors, which I am sure had nothing to do with our abrupt departure from the empire," Sechembaris said wryly, "but in any case, the light is fading and I prefer not to spoil my eyes when we are so close to completion; put away your paints and help me drink to the honor of the slave king and his traitorous queen, since it's their money paying for our wine."

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More to come at some point...

I am still playing over at caramelsilver's Three Sentence Ficathon. Here are the next six ficlets I wrote. (This time I managed to keep five of them within the structural restrictions, and the sixth only has four sentences, which is a pretty good ratio for me!)

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( 7. ) For samparker: Star Trek AOS, Gaila/Uhura, firsts, written 12/2/15 [AO3 version]

firsts (225 words)

Technically Nyota has been to space before -- the shuttle from Dar es Salaam to San Francisco crossed the Karman line in its trajectory -- but suborbital flights in a windowless cylinder (however nicely appointed, and that one wasn't very because Starfleet has better things to spend its funding on) aren't the same as actually reaching orbit, let alone flying to another celestial body.

Two months in to her first year at the academy, she stares out one of the myriad viewports on Spacedock Main where she and a quarter of this year's incoming cohort will spend the next three weeks in intensive cross-training; she's seen pictures and videos of Earth framed against the utter blackness of space since before she has conscious memories, and she can recite statistics about this facility for nearly an hour, but all her preparation can't stop the visceral, breathtaking awe of seeing her home so small and fragile down below.

"The first time I saw Orion Prime, we were running for our lives and half the viewport was scorched black from an orbital guard ship's lucky shot," Gaila says as she wraps her arms around Nyota's waist and drops a fleeting kiss to the skin beneath her left ear -- Nyota's breath catches again, for different reasons -- and adds, more softly, "I'm glad your first was better."

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( 8. ) For anonymous: Homestuck, Dave Strider/Karkat Vantas, pirates, written 12/2/15 [AO3 version]

the real treasure (250 words)

Dave considerately waited until Karkat was settling down onto the sofa (or into the sofa; it was a very tactile piece of furniture) with a copy of Moulin Rouge! in the DVD player, a box of tissues in one hand, and a remote in the other, before he dropped from the ceiling, pinned Karkat down with his own body weight, flourished a (really obviously plastic) bejeweled scimitar, and proclaimed, "Avast, matey, I claim this sadly be-sweatpanted booty in the name of the Free Rovers of Interstellar Barataria; ye be spoils of war!"

Karkat blinked dumbly upward for nearly ten seconds, eyes wide and slightly orange-tinted with shock (maybe the alchemized eyepatch was too far?) before he visibly rebooted his brain and drew breath for a patented hilari-terrible rant.

Dave cut him off: "Dude, I have seen your romance collection, billowy shirts and all, so don't even front; you are totally up for some dashing captain and virginal cabin boy and I know for a stone cold fact that Rose and Kanaya are canoodling in the library, Vriska and Terezi are snooze-sploring some dreambubbles, and your creepy clown chum is on official probation helping the Mayor reconstruct Can Town, so it looks like I have you all at my mercy, mwahahaha, now surrender your blushing charms or I'll make you walk the---mmmph!"

"Virginal my heaving bile sack," Karkat grumbled as he pulled back from the kiss, but he let the remote and tissues fall from his hands with a smile.

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( 9. ) For celeste9: MCU, any, in a bookshop, written 12/3/15 [AO3 version]

can't take you anywhere (225 words)

"I don't care if this is a front for the best fence in the fucking galaxy -- you brought Groot into a place filled with a million desecrated tree corpses!" Rocket snarled, prodding Peter with the business end of his latest experimental blaster; "And you say I've got to treat people with more consideration?"

Peter flicked a glance over Rocket's head -- a little trickier than usual, since his crewmate was perched on top of what had been a bookcase until a few minutes ago, and was still vaguely recognizable as such underneath the warping weight of vines and flowers -- and winced as Drax, always up for supporting a friend, especially if that support involved a fight, caught the outraged shop owner off the backspin of Gamora's kick and threw the hapless Sakaaran into his own cash register; there went another avenue for supplemental funds, to say nothing of the blow to their store of residual goodwill with Nova Corps when word inevitably got back to Xandar. "Yeah, whatever, chew me out later," he said, absently pushing the oversized gun away from his chest; "At the moment I'm more worried about how we're gonna get offworld before the local cops come down on our heads, so shut up and help me plan -- and no," he added reflexively, "shooting the cops is still not a solution!"

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( 10. ) For vialethe: MCU, Trish Walker/Steve Rogers & Bucky Barnes + Jessica Jones, most awkward double date ever, written 12/4/15 [AO3 version]

in sunshine and in shadow (150 words)

"The last blond she dated got brainwashed into almost murdering her, and then turned out to be a revenge-obsessed hyper-violent drug addict," Jessica says.

"The last blonde he liked was an undercover agent sent to spy on him by his own employer, and also his first girl's great-niece," Bucky retorts.

They both glance toward the counter where Trish and Steve are laughing their way through an ice cream purchase, then resume their mutual glaring contest because this is going to go catastrophically wrong -- no matter how much Steve and Trish protest that they are grown adults and can handle a relationship without tempting fate or needing paranoid nursemaids; both Bucky and Jessica know the universe is a vicious motherfucker with the worst sense of humor imaginable -- and like hell will either of them let their best friend bear the brunt of the damage when things (hearts, secrets, worlds) inevitably explode.

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( 11. ) For caramelsilver: Harry Potter, cisgirl!Harry, what changes?, written 12/4/15 [AO3 version]

in a yellow wood (250 words)

She has Lily's eyes, but her father's big ears and hopelessly cowlicked hair overshadow them -- not a pretty child in the slightest, Petunia thinks, and ten gets you one she'll need glasses by the time she starts school; there's nothing about her to make Dudley feel insecure the way Lily made Petunia feel shabby and wanting just by breathing. She might have her mother's quick wit, and of course she'll have inherited magic from both sides, but... but Lily spun butterflies out of sunlight when they were girls, and made Petunia bounce one time instead of breaking her arm when she fell from a tree, and so magic in and of itself can't be wholly pernicious, just what it does to those who think a bit of power means they can lord themselves above everyone else; perhaps if she teaches her niece to see the dangers of the magical world as well as its surface temptations, to know what killed her parents, that won't bring disaster down upon her own son.

Petunia sets up a crib in the spare room and tucks Harry (dreadful nickname, she thinks; pity Angharad is such a mouthful and hasn't any other obvious shortenings) to sleep with the smallest and least-loved of Dudley's toys; she won't love the girl -- not now, maybe not ever -- but there's a vast kingdom between love and hatred, and if nothing else, she'll have the satisfaction of taking better care of Lily's daughter than Lily would ever have managed for Dudley in return.

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( 12. ) For idhren24: Batman or Daredevil, any, 'The Image of the City' / urban way-finding, written 12/5/15 [AO3 version]

images unseen (175 words)

The midterm project for his urban studies course involves making a mental map of St. Joseph's campus, based on Kevin Lynch's elements, so everyone in the class can compare and contrast the way they experience the same small stretch of physical space; while drawing is obviously out, Matt builds a lumpy model out of Play-Doh to accompany his verbal presentation and thinks long and hard about how to explain landmarks based on scent and sound, and the increased importance of edges when any venture into unfamiliar districts comes without the navigational crutch of reading street signs or orienting around visual landmarks from a distance.

He leaves half his paths unmarked and a full third of his landmarks unspoken. The freedom he finds on midnight rooftops is a private thing, and no matter how much he can do that a normal blind person can't, those gifts have nothing to do with passing this course: he doesn't need any distractions on his path through undergrad to law school (from node to node, he thinks, a bit wryly), and so, of course, he lies.

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Note: The timing of Matt and Foggy's first meeting in the MCU is unclear -- some elements of that scene suggest law school while others suggest undergrad. I am working on the assumption that they met in law school, that Foggy also went to Columbia as an undergrad, and that Matt did his undergrad studies elsewhere but still in NYC -- hence St. Joseph's.

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And now I should probably do some real-world productive stuff...

FYI, I'm doing a three-sentence prompt meme over on Tumblr tonight. Give me the name of a character or pairing and I'll write a three-sentence fic about them.

Prompts can be left either in my Tumblr askbox or in a comment to this post. :-)

(Disclaimer: I reserve the right to refuse prompts for fandoms I don't know well enough to write. Fills may not be exactly three sentences.)

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Fills so far:

1. Engendered by Disquiet: Some days, Earth still seems like a children's tale to Vala. (350 words, Stargate: SG-1, for kk-maker) [Tumblr crosspost]

2. The Inauspiciousness of the Owl: Jareth dislikes the implications of his other shape. (125 words, Labyrinth, for madamehardy) [Tumblr crosspost]

3. The Movement of Sound To Reach the Soul: Peter finds some new music for the Milano. It's not what Gamora was expecting. (600 words, Guardians of the Galaxy, for toxinvictoria) [Tumblr crosspost]

4. Like a Sinking Star: Mazikeen and Lucifer in the garden. (200 words, Lucifer, for rosaxx50) [Tumblr crosspost]

5. I Have a Secret: Jane plans to study archaeology. She'll explain about the 'underwater' part some other day. (200 words, The Dark Is Rising, for rosaxx50) [Tumblr crosspost]

6. When a Princess Royal: On the night of her many-times-great niece's birth, Aeriel listens to a storyteller in Pirs. (500 words, The Darkangel, for rosaxx50) [Tumblr crosspost]

Summary: "Let me make sure I've got this straight: your universe-jumping doohickey just happened to activate at the same moment Gamora caught the Tesseract, and that means she got zapped to wherever your lost crewmember is, and you wound up here instead?"

The leader of the teleporting trio -- blond, younger than Peter, suspiciously human looking for someone with that kind of technology -- glanced around at the rest of the Guardians, shrugged, and shoved his own mini-blaster back into its holster. "Yeah, pretty much."

Note: This ficlet was written on 2/21/15 for samparker, in response to the Three Sentence Ficathon prompt: Guardians Of The Galaxy/Star Trek: AOS, Peter/Jim, sarcastic boys with a soft side. It ended up as a companion piece to Rattle the Cage, a ficlet wherein Natasha Romanova discovers Gaila imprisoned in a HYDRA lab. I went this route because it let me set up a scenario for filling samparker's Gamora/Gaila prompt, and I am a semi-compulsive organizer of fictional worlds.

[ETA: The slightly revised final version is now up on AO3!]

( Following the Girl )

And now, onward to Gaila and Gamora! *writes busily*

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Master List of Elizabeth Culmer's Fanfiction: Crossovers
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Organization: This list is organized in vaguely chronological order, counting from the start of each series or multi-chapter story. Memes and miscellaneous one-shots are at the bottom of the page. Word counts and writing dates are approximations.

Content/Warning Policy: 1) I am not consistent about warnings! I use them when I remember, for a few relatively broad categories of potentially problematic content, but if something is off-page, non-explicit, or generally backgrounded, I probably won't think to note it in the metadata. 2) The things I try to warn for are explicit sex, rape, murder, torture, cannibalism, incest, depression/suicide, familial dysfunction, and occasionally also societal dysfunction (aka dystopia). Sometimes I just slap a general content warning on all my fic for a given fandom and don't label each individual fic. I also don't generally warn for violence, unless the violence in a fic is dramatically out-of-step with the violence in its source canon. 3) I don't use any content rating system unless I'm posting to a site or community that requires or encourages ratings, because I find movie-style ratings counter-intuitive when applied to written fiction, and not particularly useful for anything other than denoting the presence of explicit sex, which I already note in the metadata.

Quality Rating System: I've marked my favorite stories with asterisks, on a scale of 1 to 4. The more asterisks, the more I like the story. This doesn't necessarily mean that stories without asterisks are bad, just that I don't like them as much. Also, I am not claiming to be an arbiter of taste; you may love stories I dislike, and vice versa. I am just providing a heads-up about the ones that I think are best written and/or most interesting.

Notes: My approach to crossovers is to take a stupid and/or ridiculous idea -- because crossing two separate secondary worlds is almost always a silly thing to do -- and treat it as realistically as possible, paying particular attention to characterization. I figure that I'm asking readers to suspend so much disbelief over jamming two series together that I'd better not push on any other aspect. Also, I feel the point of a crossover is to have characters from different canons meet -- or at least to have characters from one canon react to a different canon world -- so if you aren't writing them in-character, why are you even bothering? *grin*

Where To Read: As always, if an AO3 version exists, it is definitive. FF.net versions are definitive in the absence of an AO3 version. Journal versions are the equivalent of beta drafts, though the shorter and/or fragmentary works may never be posted anywhere else.

Contents: Lemonade, Locked Room Problems, An Ounce of Prevention, Weregild, The War of Secret Flames, Narutostuck, One Equal Temper of Heroic Hearts, Jewelstuck, When Natasha Met Parker, No Matter Where You Are, Edmund and Ginny Go to Harfang, assorted Narnia crossovers, miscellaneous crossovers, crossover memes

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( Lemonade )

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( Locked Room Problems )

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( An Ounce of Prevention )

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( Weregild )

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( The War of Secret Flames )

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( Narutostuck )

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( One Equal Temper of Heroic Hearts )

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( Jewelstuck )

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( When Natasha Met Parker )

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( No Matter Where You Are )

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( Edmund and Ginny Go to Harfang )

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( Assorted Narnia Crossovers )

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( Miscellaneous Crossovers )

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( Crossover memes )

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