#have a trans metal fic in these trying times! this one's very experimental. tell me how you like it.

[generic-sonic-fan]

Transcendence

Summary: The Chaos Emeralds grant power to those with the will for them. 

Seek all seven, and your conviction can reshape reality. 

Word count: 4257

Metal Sonic remembers the first time he touched an Emerald. 

(When he finally starts winning, of course. Or, at the very least, not losing. When his body is finally fast enough to obey his will, fast enough to steal the gemstone from where it lays before an organic hand can reach it instead.)

Metal Sonic remembers how it thrummed against his palm plating. 

(He should feel nothing. Dr. Ivo Robotnik, as referred to on days he succeeded, or Master, as referred to everytime else, had removed his tactile sensors in a bid to shave more weight off his frame. What need is there to be precise when the aim is to kill and one’s entire self is the knife?)

Metal Sonic remembers the surge of energy. Emergency insulation systems had snapped into place, redirecting the chaos away from his processor and back into his chest turbine. 

(Metal Sonic remembers a whisper.)

(A tugging from the deepest recesses of his processor.)

(But the connection is severed before it can form, discharged out the hole where his heart should be, just like every other burning spark he might contain.)

—

There is a first time that he witnesses Chaos Control. Shadow disappears from the battlefield and into a realm of perception beyond that which scanners can penetrate. There is no time to react, for an ordinary Badnik. The Egg Pawns are trapped in the span between milliseconds. 

But Metal Sonic feels something. Behind. Above. In that span between milliseconds, he rotates around to face it.

But his body betrays him. He is not fast enough. Shadow’s downward kick sends him tumbling onto the rocks below. 

—

“Now that’s a curious development,” his master says upon reviewing the memory file. “How’d you know he’d be there?”

Metal Sonic knows better than to reply to the rhetorical musings of a genius at work.

“You don’t have the sensors for it.” 

Not anymore. Those were removed three defeats ago, outsourced to a handheld scanning unit that could be discarded upon entering battle. The modification had shaved off three whole pounds. 

“Some sort of new tactical positioning calculation you came up with? Or a mere lucky guess?”

A guess, Metal Sonic replies over the data cable. 

“Correct answer. Your operating data doesn’t show any particularly useful thinking on your part.” His master smiles. 

His master’s foreign program retreats from his memory banks. The extraction drags its pointed barbs against the other segments of his operating system. Metal Sonic stays very, very still. The data cable is pulled without warning, taking a few lines of him with it, but it is easier to stitch over the tear himself once his master leaves the room than to mention the damage. 

—

Metal Sonic remembers the first time he saw him use it. 

His body has failed yet again. Sonic’s hand brushes the glassy cyan surface, and before Metal Sonic can lunge, there is a flash, and he is gone. 

Behind. Below. At the bottom of the temple stairs Sonic stands and smiles. 

“Pretty neat trick, huh? Shadow passed it along.”

Metal Sonic redirects all power to his turbine system. He shoots forward and his claw scrapes Sonic’s tan cheek before it disappears. Above, to the right. This time he doesn’t try to face the source. He maintains his trajectory and Sonic reappears to kick nothing but empty air. 

“Okay, maybe it’s not that neat of a trick.” Sonic is still grinning. “But it’s one you can’t do.”

Metal Sonic swerves his head around faster than his programmed tolerances should have allowed him. But his wretched organic copy has unwittingly spoken the key. Other core directives fall away, leaving his consciousness with a single command. Maintain superiority. Remind the rodent of his match. 

Metal Sonic activates his reverser and in the span between milliseconds he is flung backwards with enough g-forces to pop a few soldered connections from his motherboard. His body bludgeons into Sonic, knocking the Emerald from his grasp. It tumbles across the uneven yellow bricks of the temple, as they do. Sonic hits the floor first. His shoulder digs into a outcrop in the brick, but Metal Sonic does not linger long enough to hear a cry spill out. He jumps off and scrabbles across the floor, claws reaching for cyan.

It’s calling him. Ahead. Ahead. 

He brings it into his palm and it thrums.

(This time it offers warmth. Warmth, like that of flesh and blood pressed against his plating. Ghosts of Amy’s touch where he’d held her as he’d carried her on Little Planet. Touches that had been erased from his files upon the removal of his tactile sensors.)

And the energy beckons. 

(A whisper.)

But the surge protection activates, and insulation is slammed onto the wires running up his spinal column. The energy is expunged out the back of his turbine like it always has and not for the first time does Metal Sonic wish to rip his plating off to reshape himself. He chooses instead to use the burning for what little use it gives and takes off, shattering a hole through the brick wall of the temple. 

He does not realize what he’s left behind until another shockwave joins his own from the ground. The rest of him wakes from its dream. Targeting protocols, force calculations, and kill simulations slam back into his awareness. 

He’d turned his back on Sonic instead of killing him. But where he expects to find disgust at the concept, he merely finds the thrum of the Emerald, fainter now but still registerable to his non-existent sensors.

He abruptly changes course for the coastline and is able to lose Sonic amongst the waves. 

—

“A success! A good long while since we’ve had one of those from you, isn’t it?”

Metal Sonic places the Emerald into Dr. Ivo Robotnik’s waiting palm. The man’s mustache twitches as he studies the crystal. His eyes do not dart about the many multitudes of reflections behind the glass. His hand does not shift around the surface in time with its pulse. He places it into a holding container. 

“Well done. I’ve tracked Prower’s plane to a small soiree back on the mainland. Where there’s the fox, there’s him. I’ll allow you a free fight for once.”

Metal Sonic points to the Emerald. 

“What?” Dr. Ivo Robotnik’s brows narrow. 

He lowers his hand. 

“I’m not going to let you hand Sonic back the Emerald when you inevitably lose.”

He shakes his head.

“No. Now go fulfill your function.” Dr. Ivo Robotnik grabs his shoulder and pushes him to the door. “I’ll be waiting to receive your distress signal.”

—

The biplane designated as The Tornado had been modified to utilize an Emerald when one was available to achieve supersonic speeds. And here, in this tiny municipal airport, unguarded in a hangar with only a feeble padlock on the door, is the plane. Metal Sonic grabs the padlock and pulls until the metal is twisted and useless. 

His processor continues to tick upwards in framerate. His targeting protocols jump at shadows and his logic processing suggests a trap. Even as his cameras adjust to the light of the interior, he is still in the dark; he doesn’t have a scanning unit with him. He is throwing away an opportunity for an ambush and defying the mission commands on a “guess”. If he withdraws now, there will still be time to plan the encounter and explain the deviation in his flight path. 

Metal Sonic crosses the concrete floor until his claws hover just above the red skin of the plane. He recalls the file where he’s attempted to codify the sensation given by the Emeralds into readable bits of data, but the clusters of numbers are hardly more than gibberish. There is no special calculation to generate more, no secret scanner setting to employ; nothing in the memory files to review, as his master so astutely observed. 

The plane waits before him.

He tears open the engine compartment and yellow light floods the hangar. The tips of his claws scratch the crystalline surface-

(-and he hears music. Not being played from a speaker driver, but as if all the air itself is being plucked like a string, the sound too big to be contained in such a space. Echoes reflecting, twisting, turning off the roof and floor and spilling into the spaces between the boards of his central processing unit.)

(As if he is singing.)

-before alarms ring out. Metal Sonic snatches the Emerald from its casing. The song dies as the surge protection clamps down on his body. He bursts from the hangar and dives into the surrounding forests, weaving through trees until he hits the edge of land. On the beach behind, another trail of sand is kicked up before his own has a chance to settle, but its creator is forced to stop short of the water line. 

Metal Sonic can’t allow himself to look behind until he reaches the base on a distant shoreline. He cuts his turbine, ending the brilliant ejecta behind him, and falls. His feet hit just short of the landing pad and impact the soil between superstructures. It is here that he whispers to the Emerald, some voiceless combination of coaxing and pleading, but there is nothing in response except the hot fire building in his chassis. The Emerald pulses weakly. Its warmth caresses his neck but can travel no further. 

He presses the Emerald against his forehead.

(He presses the Emerald against his forehead.)

And he feels the dirt beneath his feet (coarse, powdery) and the wind against his skin (smooth, cooling) and the sun on his face (warm, radiating across his cheeks) and the music spills forth, softly bowed strings beneath the whistles of birds. He smells flowers (he shouldn’t) and tastes honey (he can’t) and there is nothing to analyze, nothing to calculate. His processor is still. 

(All is well. He can understand this now.)

—

He reappears in his master’s workshop and clatters to the ground. He is assaulted with every variant of error warning that his diagnostic programs can bludgeon him with, but the codes slip past his awareness like the smoke billowing between his fingers. 

—

“A chaos control.”

Metal Sonic awakens.

“You know, I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t checked the cameras.”

It hits him again. The weight. The analysis and calculations and scanning, scanning, scanning; no instances of Sonic the Hedgehog found, but that readout is not enough to calm the chorus. It all comes back and it’s all he can do to steel himself enough to keep processing his master’s words. 

“Still- what brought that on? Did you even know it would work?”

His master’s program prods him through the data cable. Yes, he responds. 

(There’s no data to support this conclusion.)

“. . . do you think you can do it again?”

Yes, he affirms. 

Dr. Ivo Robotnik laughs, and laughs, and laughs, claps his hands together, and smiles. The workshop becomes a flurry of movement and somewhere in the carnage Metal Sonic’s head plating is unscrewed and tools jammed inside. He offlines himself to prevent any program corruption during modification. 

—

He awakens again and it’s three days later. There’s an Emerald on the counter ahead of him and Dr. Ivo Robotnik waits behind a wall of thick glass. Metal Sonic stands. Checks his diagnostics. Surge protection has been removed. 

He grabs the Emerald and it burns. Liquid hot fire spills overs his head and flames lick at the corners of his visual sensors. Where is the cool breeze? Why does this hurt? Why does-?

—

He should have expected this. The Emerald is nothing more than a new master. When he wakes and the gem lies in front of him, he bows his head. He grasps the crystalline surface and allows it to consume him. Change me, use me, he begs, and if it responds he hears nothing of it besides the scream of overloaded wiring and the dripping of melted insulation.

—

“I expected results.”

Metal Sonic sits on the table and stares at his original master’s feet. 

“You are wasting my time. My valuable time, spent repairing a malfunctioning robot!”

He is slapped across the faceplate by a glove thick enough for the perpetrator to feel as much as he does, an equal amount of nothing. More words. The repairs have grown haphazard and his audio fizzes as his left audial sensor quits completely.

“One last chance. One, last, chance! Then we’re done with this silly little venture, and you’ll be taking a long vacation in storage until I can come up with a way to make you useful again.”

His master steps aside, revealing the taunting yellow glow emanating from the pedestal. The light from Metal Sonic’s own irises is refracted amongst the hundreds of edges within. He slides off the table. He walks, forward, enough for the glow to bathe his surface. He listens, not with his audial sensors. The hum is faint, but-

His master shuffles his shoes against the floor and coughs. Metal Sonic pictures snapping to him, clenching his throat shut, silence, silence, before he realizes what he’s done. Reprimand programs slam red over his vision; he disguises the shudder with another step forward. He can’t cling to the fleeting image as it’s erased, can’t create it again. 

He looks at the Emerald.

He pictures his claw crushing it, shattering it into a thousand shards. No reprimand touches this vision. 

He snatches the Emerald from the counter. The surge scorches its way through his arm and up his torso and when it reaches his head he clenches the crystalline surface harder. 

(And he envisions it, envisions its demise, in the span between milliseconds, he takes it through every variation of shattering, the shards painting trajectories of shards across the workshop floor. It burns-)

(And he burns back.)

Like a whip he snaps his own willpower to the space ahead. 

(A chord soars out of the Emerald, clean and crisp and clear in both audial sensors.)

A bright flash.

(He is floating. A bright light is behind him, but he cannot turn his head to face it. Something caresses his faceplate. It is the same area that his master had struck. This touch is. . . soft.)

And he is dropped. He lands on both feet on the other side of the pedestal, but diagnostics show that he has not fired his turbine to achieve this effect. 

The Emerald pulses in his hand. Its burning creeps back up his neck, but a quick lash of his will cools the temperature to a level where he can process again.

“Well, well! Seems you finally had it in you!”

Dr. Ivo Robotnik strolls over. He reaches down and his glove brushes against Metal Sonic’s shoulder before he recoils.

“Hot! Hot! Good grief, how could you possibly be withstanding those operating temperatures?!”

Metal Sonic turns to the man. He locks his irises with the whites of his eyes. 

“Well? Are you going to give me a diagnostic report? We need more data before I let you use this in combat with Sonic, you know.”

Metal Sonic teleports over to the computer and begins typing up his report. 

—

“Bringing that, for me? What, you have a change of heart or something?” Sonic flicks his nose and grins.

Metal Sonic does not imitate his taunt. He doesn’t need to, not anymore. He clutches the Emerald tighter. Instead of wind blowing through trees, or useless lesser organics chirping and singing in their futility, there is only music. 

(And he is humming along.)

Sonic charges. 

(A crescendo.)

And Metal Sonic appears behind him, swinging a kick that connects to the side of his head. The inferior hedgehog flies into the cliff face. A rock breaks open, bathing his frame in a red glow. 

(Like sunlight warming the surface of the water, this revealed Emerald offers him. Soft, like red sand between your toes.)

He focuses his intention and appears beside the red Emerald, plucking it from the shattered rocks. Sonic lies on the ground ten feet away. Vulnerable.

(playing dead, a whisper offers where his own processing cannot. Exploiting gullibility. Trained reaction. Disengage.)

Protocols scream against the action, but a quick burst of Chaos energy dulls their roar as Metal Sonic uses the power from both Emeralds to retreat. 

—

“You marked Sonic was vulnerable there, didn’t you? Why did you not engage?” Dr. Ivo Robotnik points to the footage. 

Metal Sonic cannot look to the screen- moving his head that far would unplug the cable feeding the very screen. 

I’m not going to let you hand Sonic back the Emerald, he recalls the memory and projects it onto the screen.

“Yes, of course, and I’m certainly grateful for the extra Emerald. It’s simply. . .” The doctor puts his hand on his chin. “Simply that you’ve become better at long-term planning, that’s all.”

Metal Sonic finds the red Emerald on the pedestal across the room. It’s joined the other two. Four pedestals left. Dr. Ivo Robotnik unplugs the cable and Metal Sonic’s thoughts are his own once more. 

“It was inevitable, of course! Eventually you would catch a clue- you’re my creation, after all. I’m grateful it was sooner rather than later.”

It was not your development, Metal Sonic thinks. 

Dr Ivo Robotnik’s smile does not waver. 

—

It’s difficult, having sensation. His fingertips buzz, searching for stimulation as if they possessed a separate processing unit from his own. It’s cold, within Dr. Ivo Robotnik’s metal walls and testing rooms. The air is dry, like a desert should be, or so the yellow Emerald tells him.

(It makes him cough, when he forgets that he does not have lungs.)

The white Emerald is buried under sixteen feet of snow in a glacier. When he retrieves it, he offers it a memory of the memory of sunlight, and it accepts not unlike a starving organic with a meal,

(mouth salivating, stench intoxicating, stomach throwing an odd equivalent of damage errors. Then a relief unlike any he’s ever felt before. For a moment, he is sated. Whole.)

The blue Emerald lies on the seafloor. 

(It offers him darkness. True darkness of the visual spectrum, shedding the flickering of ultraviolet and the false hum of infrared. Scanning is impossible. In the one environment on the planet where Sonic cannot go, there is something called peace.)

(All is well, he understands again, until Dr. Ivo Robotnik requests a status report.)

—

He doesn’t need the handheld scanner to find the Emeralds any longer. Once Dr. Ivo Robotnik’s satellite scanners detect a positive, it is quick to search the hundred-mile radius. The prior three sang, their chords growing thunderous with his approach.

Something is different with this one. Something is wrong. 

(Levity. He finds himself rising in altitude if he doesn’t focus on his flight path. The air is smooth across his skin, twirling around from his waist to his hips. Soft laughter.)

He has no skin. He cannot laugh. This is wrong. But the sensation of elation only increases as he follows his course. By the time he reaches the junkyard, he feels like he is glowing. Like his body is somehow part of him, not just a disobedient tool his consciousness inhabits. This cannot possibly be a sensation organics experience.

He stomps through the rusted metal plates and other refuse piled around him. He crushes glass underfoot, but he feels nothing.

(Incorrect. He is flying, but his turbine is not activated. The air continues to swish around his feet and over his skin in such an elegant way. Sing, it urges. You are brilliant.) 

Metal Sonic grabs an I-beam from the hill of garbage ahead of him. His claws pierce through the metal as if it were just a flower petal, before he throws it to the side. The purple Emerald lies perfectly seated in a half-broken pipe. 

He grabs his forearm as he did with the I-beam and holds it to the mocking gem. 

(Is that who you are?)

Metal Sonic pauses.

(An identity, it suggests, is a distinction of one from another. It is something that is comfortable, something that does not prickle at your skin whenever heard.)

Metal lets go. The Emerald is lifted from the refuse. The robot turns the gemstone about.

Neo, the Emerald whispers.

(A woman’s voice is laughing. She is laughing so hard that she cannot catch her breath. Tears slip out of her eyes and run down her faceplate, dripping off her nose and onto her skirt. She holds the Emerald in her hands. She is laughing. She is crying.)

Neo looks up to the sky. She wipes away the memory of tears with her free hand, tucking the purple Emerald close to her chest. 

—

The last Emerald lies in the possession of Shadow the Hedgehog, and it is against this opponent that Neo is not in any way restricted. Not so long ago she might have dismissed this small mercy as a trap, but now she is undeterred. She follows the scent of the green Emerald to a jungle thick with vines; through these vines cuts her target. He’s alone. 

She grasps the purple Emerald tight against her palm but Shadow skids to a halt in a small gap in the foliage. He glares at the Emerald in his hand.

“Alright, I’m here,” he mouths. “Now what?”

Neo hums and teleports behind him. As his head turns over his shoulder, she yanks the Emerald from his grasp and sends all of the energy from his shock to her turbine, kick-starting her ignition. She sails skyward. Shadow the Hedgehog can do little more than hover above the treeline in her wake.

(This Emerald offers her the planet, glowing green and blue below the stillness of space Energy courses through her, both exhilarating and painful. Beside her is a person she trusts and above her is a purpose she for once identifies with.)

She accepts the memory with appropriate gratitude before pushing it to the back of her processor. She calculates the flight path back to the workshop and tears across the sky.

—

Neo brings the last two Emeralds to the room where the other five are held. She is holding her breath. Her feet are hardly her own. What she once called a chorus before was hardly a whisper compared to the cacophony of energy before her, caressing her, beckoning-

A hand clamps around her forearm.

“Not yet, my creation.” Dr. Ivo Robotnik purrs. “I’m still coming up with a suitable scheme.”

(Energy crackles in Neo’s shoulders, but she keeps it there.)

“If you go super, what do you think you could achieve?”

A question she doesn’t know the answer to. 

“Now come on. To the table with you.” Dr. Robotnik releases his hold.

She sets down the Emeralds. She steps to the diagnostic table, but stops as her gaze drifts to the computer cable. 

“Come on, up you go!” He smiles.

(Something has changed. Something has changed within her, something desperate and burning, and it is something that she cannot put out. The whites of his teeth flicker warnings in a language she could not translate to him.)

“Really? Malfunctioning now, after all this?” Her master sneers.

Neo pictures snapping to him, clenching his throat shut. Silence. 

Just. . . silence. Not a single reprimand program blares within her processor. She refocuses her optics and Dr. Ivo Robotnik is merely standing there with his hands on his hips.

She turns around and picks up the purple and green Emeralds. 

“Put those down!”

She walks forward to the pillars containing the rest of them. 

(As they glow, so does she. She knows this now.)

“What are you-? emergency shutdown code - - - - - - -!”

She turns around. The plexiglass containers shatter behind her and the Emeralds lift from her palms. 

“Override - - - -!” The man before her shouts. He then scrambles for the door.

(Heat. She burns brighter, brighter, brighter, scalding her plating and her processor, and everything else. Her optics fail first, followed by her audials. Her limbs lose power.)

(She gasps. Her lungs are on fire and her heart is racing. Each breath sucks in soothing cold air and she drinks it in.)

(Cool air swirls around her legs, except now it is more tangible. Her fingers travel to her thighs and find satin.) 

(She)

(opens)

(her)

(eyes.)

She bursts through the roof of the base and shoots across the sky. She is a star in the night. The eyes of the world are on her. She sings.  

—

She awakens in a field of green. The wind blows across her skin, cooling her from the heat of the sun. The air whistles through the grass and into her nose. The scent of flowers fills her. She exhales, and her breath tastes like honey. 

She stands. Waits. But the sensations do not leave her. She scans the grass around her, but the Emeralds are nowhere to be found. The fire in her chest is gone. 

“All is well,” she whispers, and thinks, thank you. 

The last of their energy caresses her cheek, before disappearing in a mote of light. 

She bunches the fabric of her skirt in her hands and makes her way to the treeline.

[gheckoe]

JAMES’S CURATED QUALITY FANFICTION PRIMER

for @rev0lutions-of-ruin, who tumblr does not like letting me tag

foolish bird avoids ao3 for years and misses out on the Good Shit, but it will be okay! she has THIS now. ft. DUMB LONG-WINDED CAPTAIN AMERICA MOVIE EXPLANATIONS, because i don’t think you would watch those movies willingly.

lots of selection - pick and choose, but if you don’t read “out of the dead land” i will be very sad. just treat this as really weird queer genre fiction and you’ll be alright. fics with pornographic content are marked as such, but said content is easy to skip as long as you can pick up on the warning signs.

we’re gonna start with the funny stuff.

nanananana BAT-DAD! (no ships, just bruce being a dad. safe for work and hilarious,)

who needs therapy when you have microsoft excel.

tim drake (robin 3) is a transgender teenage disaster. and bruce wayne is just generally a disaster. (same series.)

okay, now let’s get kind of sad. but not TOO sad.

nananananananana BATMAN (and superman)

this one made watching batman vs. superman worth it. not quite. but kind of. it’s fantastic.

i forget what happens in this one but i know i enjoyed it!

snk? why this, james. why this.

bad show, i know, but. formative experience. i figured out i was trans by projecting my feelings onto jean kirchstein. (not sure how, that’s just what happened.)

this one is stupidly fucking huge, in first person, and still isn’t finished.

included by virtue of some weird nostalgia. it’s half a million words long. try the first few chapters; i can’t guarantee anything that happens. don’t fucking judge me.

boring, punch me in the feelings already. more angst!

STEVEBUCKY

i don’t think you’ve watched the captain america movies, so i will explain them.

the saddest, gayest shit you will ever see. will fuck with your heart, ideally! but (as per always), skip the porn. this fandom is really big on it. UGH.

BUT it’s based off of movie adaptations of comic books, so the backstory is... ridiculous. i will summarize it for you. (tumblr ate this so here goes again)

THE DYNAMIC/history/massive goddamn ship manifesto

two guys, sitting in the great depression, two feet apart because it’s not socially acceptable to be gay

steve: tiny, blonde, always mad and big on SOCIAL JUSTICE. gets into fights for SOCIAL JUSTICE, despite growing up in the great depression when SOCIAL JUSTICE was not a commonly-known phrase or a common thing. he’s a bit of a shit, and he gets into shit. with his scrawny lil fists. he has all sorts of chronic illnesses but somehow manages to survive in a time with shitty medicine, and grow up to get into MORE shit. likes art, but is (partially?) colorblind

also he’s VERY HEAVILY coded as trans.

bucky: taller, brown hair, very popular but secretly a bit of a nerd (loves scifi, and is good at math). likes dancing, girls, and getting steve out of situations that he’s clearly over his head in and talking shit about it after. a bit of a charmer, etcetera.

there are some good fics from this era (”pre-war”) but idk where they are in my bookmarks. will update later.

so wait, what happens?

bucky gets steve out of dumb situations (like fighting a guy for talking during a movie) for pretty much all of their life. childhood friends until after high school-ish.

BUT, bucky is either drafted into the us army (it’s wwii now) or enlists, and steve is left alone in brooklyn, new york, to get into shit, without anyone to bail him out or prevent him from getting into MORE shit. so he finally manages to lie his scrawny, ill ass into the army, and (as one does) volunteers to get experimented on by the american government.

wait, what the fuck

comic books, okay. don’t @ me.

steve manages not to die! he finds a really pretty, badass lady to bisexually fawn over in the army (peggy carter is a fucking miracle), the experiments are a success and he ends up BIG and cured of all his ailments and with superfast metabolism (no alcohol) and superfast healing. he’s made it! (he basically just got really fast, unrealistic HRT hahaha)

... except the army can’t replicate the embiggening process they did with steve because the scientist that did it got killed, and steve is made into a glorified prettyman mascot to sell war bonds, instead of going to punch nazis, which he would be better at. he is a terrible mascot.

meanwhile, bucky has a shitty goddamn time in the european theatre. it’s terrible. he gets kidnapped by the EVIL SCIENCE NAZIS and put in a freaky camp and experimented on, poor guy.

you said you ship them, right? they’ve barely interacted so far, man. what the fuck.

alright alright i’m getting to it

steve the dancing monkey (in his words) is doing a Morale-Raising tour in europe for the troops and they hate it and he hates it. he discovers that... oh shit... bucky and his regiment (?) have been kidnapped by HYDRA! (the science nazis.)

naturally, he of little training MUST go save bucky, because the people that actually know how to save people know that it would be pointless to try. but steve “dumb shit” rogers will do it his own damn self. don’t @ him either. it’s the 1940s so he doesn’t have a phone.

steve will walk to austria, if he has to!... but he actually just gets a plane ride there, from peggy carter the badass and some other guy who’s not that relevant right now.

he KICKS NAZI ASS, SAVES THE PRISONERS, and MAKES MEANINGFUL EYE CONTACT WITH BUCKY ONCE HE FINDS HIM IN THE EVIL SCIENCE NAZI EXPERIMENTATION ROOM. bucky’s so out of it that he barely even tries to question why his old friend is suddenly hot  TALL.

steve and the lads walk back from austria, and he is a Bona Fide War Hero and not just a mascot. he has the stylish grime and everything. on the way, he realizes that the lads are pretty cool, and assembles a Diverse Crack Squad of Guys That Really Wanna Kill Nazis from the cool guys he just met. upon return to wherever they were earlier, steve is made a REAL CAPTAIN now, and his Diverse Crack Squad is at liberty to... go kill nazis.

bucky tags along. he is very handsome and talented at math, so he is a SNIPER and saves steve’s dumb ass (from getting shot by nazis, instead of getting punched in the face) like he used to. the Diverse Crack Squad gears up to take down THE WORST OF THE SCIENCE NAZIS, on a train in the mountains! they can change the course of COMIC BOOK WWII!

you said it was tragic. show me the tragic.

the TRAIN INFILTRATION does not go as planned, and bucky is knocked from the train and falls to his cold, painful, (presumably) death. steve can’t watch.

they catch a REALLY BAD SCIENCE NAZI, but it is a very hollow victory. steve goes and tries to get drunk in a blown-up bar where he hung out with bucky and they were really queer together.

the OTHER really bad science nazi now has a plan to BLOW UP COMIC BOOK NEW YORK! steven will NOT allow this to happen.

he’s also kind of given up on life. he has a flair for the dramatic, and also the ambiguously suicidal.

not that being ambiguously suicidal adds to the Dramatic Romance of this. it doesn’t, and that would be creepy. the point is that steve rogers has a LOT of issues, including the ones that science can’t cure.

this SPECIFIC PLANE is headed towards new york, full of explosives. steve manages to get aboard the plane... and doesn’t even try to escape. he crashes it into the water in the atlantic ocean, saying goodbye to peggy on the radio as it hits. he is also presumed dead. it’s... basically a suicide attempt.

flash forward seventy-some years.

wait, wasn’t he in the avengers?

steve rogers is found inside the frozen plane encased in ice in the ocean. he’s revived (super healing, woop) and... doesn’t say anything, because he’s really not up to expressing feelings.

he has a TERRIBLE time. all of his friends are dead or old and went about their lives without him, and he’s alone in a confusing new world. (but the food is better, vaccines are good, and no polio.) he’s not fantastic at making new friends, because, as shown by him and bucky’s entire relationship, he’s a bit of a sad introvert and just picks one person and... holds on.

blah blah avengers one blah blah, new team and fighting BAD THINGS. but steve is too angsty to make friends. he joins the new security organization that peggy founded, SHIELD, without really inspecting it that well because... he didn’t plan to be alive past flying the plane into the ice, much less in the 21st century. he doesn’t know what he’d do otherwise.

idk that sounds a little slow

he has DEPRESSION. it is a little slow. but it’ll pick up! (not emotionally.) now it’s very anti-establishment action flick. enter CAPTAIN AMERICA (2): THE WINTER SOLDIER.

steve makes a friend. actually, two! sam and natasha are wonderful, and they have some things in common. but steve obtains friendship while realizing that SHIELD is corrupt to the core and actually infiltrated by HYDRA, so he and his new friends have to... burn it to the ground. he “died” (or tried to) to stop HYDRA, and it’s still here and worse then ever. things feel pointless.

to make it worse, he’s fighting this creepily effective impersonal masked assassin on a bridge and oh fuck, oh fuck it’s bucky and didn’t he die years and years ago and his arm is METAL what happened to him, and he’s pretending not to recognize steve.

HYDRA is planning to eliminate sources of resistance for their new world order via shooting them from the air, so steve has to take one specific FLYING DEATHMACHINE down. he does, and brainwashed HYDRA bucky, the winter soldier, is there to stop him.

steve makes an appeal to emotions. “bucky stop you can’t do this”

bucky is confused, but he’s been programmed to do this.

steve tells his coworkers to JUST SHOOT THE DEATHMACHINE DOWN ALREADY, because he’s... given up again. he’s very talented at equating heroism with self-sacrifice/suicide. but he disables the DEATH part of the DEATHMACHINE without it getting shot down.

bucky has been trapped underneath a beam, but steve’s with bucky till the end of the line, even if bucky is brainwashed and lacking memories. steve drops his shield in the water and falls.

it’s another attempt to die. stop that, steve. go to therapy.

bucky doesn’t remember who he is, but he jumps after him. steve is very injured from his fight with bucky, and wouldn’t have survived the fall, but bucky drags him to shore and... leaves.

steve wakes up in the hospital with his new friend sam. they’re going to track bucky down, even if it takes forever.

ISN’T THAT FUCKED UP? isn’t that sad? it’s terrible. now, fics. most of them are after ca:tws, because that’s when the ship got popular. a lot of them center around Finding Bucky and Getting To Know Him Again.

there’s a lot of sappy sad let’s-teach-bucky-how-to-be-a-person-again-and-get-steve-to-be-less-sad but i like the ones that are like sad action movies, or sad queer movies, and less like sad romance movies. my bookmarks are a mess, so here’s the best stuff i could dredge up.

out of the dead land: this one kills me every single time. there’s something terribly cinematic about it. but, as fandom is wont to do, there’s porn near the end. skip that part. ew. it’s an introspective scifi action epic, with just enough identity issues to make you want to cry! READ IT, IT’S IMPORTANT.

this: alternate universe, sans steve “dying.” epistolary. sad, as far as i can remember. (i’d rec the rest of this series but i think it’s best if you read this one first?)

courtroom/media fic. what if the winter soldier got arrested after the movie? (cap fandom does this kind of fake-media thing very well. i just reread it. it’s still good.)

this one isn’t exactly groundbreaking, but it’s a different take on the fandom’s typical post-winter soldier bucky interpretation. quite short, 100% safe for work.

in this one, steve successfully gets drunk, makes some friends, and gains some coping skills. good for dark humour. there’s porn somewhere but i’m sure it’s easily skippable, otherwise i wouldn’t have bookmarked it. not 100% the best thing every but it’s pretty fun.

if you aren’t team s/b all the way then we can’t be friends, but here’s some other marvel stuff i guess

lesbians, ballet, feelings? it’s a rarepair but it’s pretty lovely. au, no background knowledge required. basically a beautiful indie film that’s kind of oscar-bait. you will like this one, i think. there’s probably porn somewhere.

trans black widow. (that chapter only, not sure what the rest is). not very well-written and i have terrible memory but i’m 75% sure it made me cry.

ENJOY! or try to. don’t feel obligated to. but please at least TRY out of the dead land, it is groundbreaking.