“Depression turns you into a series of nouns, without the adjectives and without the verbs. You don’t remember where you misplaced your descriptions, your actions … You become: bed, shower, socks, coffee, keys, obligations.”— A Series of Nouns
Alright, so. Coffee. I don’t drink coffee. I have no desire to drink coffee. I find people who enthusiastically go on about the flavor differences of lattes, espressos, and french press brews, both amusing and mildly baffling. All the coffee ads. Coffee jokes. Bustling coffee shops. To me, all coffee is similarly bitter and unpleasant. I have been through so many “Try this, it’s sweet! You can’t even taste the coffee!” Alas, I always can. And I’m sensitive to caffeine anyway. So, I don’t really think about drinking it when I wake up or am tired.
Yet I love the smell of coffee. I love the idea of coffee. The feeling of a warm cup taking the chill from my fingers, the cozy ritual of having a drink and chat.
I might try someone’s coffee. If they ask, if I want to please them and share in something they enjoy.
I am also perfectly capable of learning the preferences of those I care about and creating a cup for their pleasure.
But I don’t want coffee, generally speaking. I will probably make a face after trying their coffee and wash the taste out with something else. They may rush to reassure me that it is an acquired taste. And I’ll have to reply that it’s a taste I don’t particularly care about acquiring in the way they did. ‘Drink it till you like it’ will never work for me.
But that doesn’t mean I am against coffee or think people shouldn’t drink it. Doesn’t mean I’ve taken a vow to never drink any. And sure, maybe if you get one of those sugar and whipped cream disasters, more of a warm milkshake than a cup of coffee, I’ll probably be happier sipping it with you. But honestly? I’d rather smell someone else’s coffee and not be expected to drink it. I’d really rather have the heat and sweetness of my hot cocoa.
I love this
The best part is it works for ALLLL the ace spectrum! Maybe you like one specific type of coffee on rare occasions! Maybe you enjoy coffee when you’re sharing the drink with someone! Maybe you can’t even stand the smell of coffee!
Reincarnation is a known, common, and expected result of death. You are a bounty hunter that specializes in tracking down people who have committed suicide to escape debts or a jail sentence.
“It’s a girl!” the doctor exclaimed.
“It’s a fucking tax dodger is what is it!” Blaize ‘The Flame’ Hogan burst into the infirmary, cocking his shotgun.
I always found it a bit odd. Hilarious, but it raised too many questions. When did Steve make these? Why did Steve make these? How did he manage to be so cheesy and overly sincere knowing how much crap he would get from the other Avengers for it?
Well, today my sister told me her headcanon. Picture the scene. Steve leans on the back of a chair, as above. Peter immediately launches into ‘So, you got detention…’. Cap blinks. Peter awkwardly tries to explain. It turns out Cap has no idea what videos he means, and neither do any of the other Avengers.
So they get in touch with the company who made them, and they swear blind that it was really the real Captain America, and that it all his idea. That he came in and said how much he wanted to help the youth of today.And the Avengers all lose it because someone is running around doing an unbelievably good impression of Captain America, they could have destroyed his reputation, they could have infiltrated the Avengers; and instead all they are apparently using it for is to make silly, embarrassing videos.
It’s completely baffling. Who could possibly be behind it all?
// BRING THE WOLVES DOWN // a short story about a village that believes wolves instead of women
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(Prompt: Steve and Toni are Hades and Persephone reborn and their godhood wakes when they meet on the helicarrier but everyone believes Toni is Death and Steve is Life.)
(I’mma repost the beginning here as I add to make the reading flow smoother)
I of course go for the fucking angst because I’m That Bitch™.
So like what if yeah them meeting wakes their godhood but Steve …. Steve’s a bit reluctant.
Because hasn’t he lost enough? Hasn’t the world changed enough? Does this have to happen too? His very humanity ripped from him? Choices gone?
And Toni … god Toni just fucking buckles it down, bites back the agony of everyone immediately assuming she’s Death instead of Creation. The torture of Steve turning from her too, lips sealed shut tightly, never even trying to defend her, to correct anyone.
But Toni knows what she is, knows who she is, always has in one way or another. Only now it finally makes sense, finally feels right.
Because she is Persephone reborn, a goddess of creation, of life, of blossoming and growth.
But so many forget that her name wasn’t always Persephone. It was Kore once, little girl.
And then she chose the Underworld, chose Hades, and Zeus renamed her and so many have forgotten the true meaning of the name Persephone.
The dust hangs heavy in the Wakandan air. Light streams between the alien monoliths speared into the earth. Blood, dust, bodies, heat, it all bleeds out and bleeds together. It hangs there, settling across her skins, filling her lungs. Death has come here, made a home, ripped up the earth and left life barren.
It’s chaos. And not the chaos of creation but a smothering, bastardised vortex of destruction, with roiling voids where space warps and cries out. There was a person here, and here, and here. There was a chance not taken there, and there, and there.
‘What could have been!?!
Will be, should be, must be!
You must make it be’, the Fates cry at her.
The universe is in tatters. It’s done nothing but scream louder and louder at her since Nebula grabbed hold of one arm and dragged her onto the ship. The armour sparking and receding, sharp rocks clawing out pieces of her to leave on Titan.
Toni doesn’t feel the pain. All she can feel is the echo of that one snap of meaty fingers reverberating through the strings, where a mad feral thing shoved his will into the threads of time-life-space shaped like a clumsy knife and just… ripped.
Toni feels everything and nothing. It’s raw and unending and yet still nothing against the empty space where Peter had crowded up against her heart, where her arms were wrapped tight around his body before it… before he…
It’s the void over New York, all over again. A million ships, a hoard of gaping maws. And this time it doesn’t extend further and further across the horizon blacking out everything as the universe shrieked in terror. Now its here in her arms, eating, eating, eating away. A terrifying singularity, and if she can just bring her arms tighter around her body, feel the space he inhabited… Toni crafted a star in a cave with a box of scraps and if she can just feel a little more, maybe her makers hands will grasp a piece and then find another and another, and it’ll all come back together. She’ll be able to put it back together, because that’s her job, right? That’s her function, her part to play.
But maybe she’ll wake up and this will be another night terror, a fresh thorn to dig into her skin in her flower crown of burdens.
But the world isn’t that kind to her. Nothing is fair.
They travel light-years, the two of them. Two angry, hollow women beaten again and again by men chasing death; who tried to bend and shape them to their will, but only tempered that steely metal into Uru-like hardness.
Toni stares at her hands and Nebula stares at the horizon, at the controls, at the blood drip, drip, dripping from Toni’s fingers to the floor, at that fixed, fuzzy blinking point on the map, at everything but that empty space to her right.
They are scraped raw across space, leaving bits and pieces across the stars as they jump from point to point. They should be ripped apart again and again by subspace, but the universe has need for them yet.
The ship is noisy and quiet in all the wrong places, and then here they were. Back on Earth where it all started. All the players in place, and that dust just drifting in the wind, tinting everything in a rosy hue. Not the soft colour of her favourite glasses but a grubby, rusty rouge.
And in front of them two self-righteous men are locked in combat for one gaudy glove, scrapping in the ashes and the dirt over something neither understands. They pull and they push and the tattered threads snare and knot under their feet, as they fight to make their will dominant.
Steve who doesn’t want her, doesn’t want life, wants all the wrong things. Wants nothing and everything, and everyone else to move.
Thanos who wants something he’ll never understand, trying to pull on the guise of something that doesn’t fit him, isn’t his to wear, will never be his to wear.
Bucky, who watches as waits at the side, looking for an opening. The universes cosmic joke because it realised it had Fucked Up ä with Steve and so set up an understudy to pair her off with.
Toni knows the script. She’s Persephone reborn and her lines are queued up and its opening night, showtime baby!
None of these men are fit to be her King. Why must she have a king. All they do is conquer and lay waste, and leave her to pick up the pieces and build, build, build, ‘Starks are made of iron, girl. Stop disappointing me and make something!’
She can see the paths teasing as the edges of her vision. A step to the left and she’s beaten and battered by distrustful eyes and a strong jaw. A sway to the right and the colossal form shadows her light and halts creation, snuffs out those fragile blossoms and growth. Stay stationary and that cold fist takes hold of her hand and doesn’t let go, and takes and takes and takes to fill the empty spaces inside.
She would survive but never really live. She’d be confined by the story, by legacy, by the weight of expectation. The cycle would begin again, and she would fight, adapt, try to make a home from the broken pieces scattered at her feet, try grow possibilities that would live for a time and then wither and die.
The universe howls and Toni’s entire being screams with it.
Chaos bringer. It whispers with possibilities.
Kore. It says sternly.
Persephone. It demands.
“Fix us”, all the voices shriek.
And just… fuck that.
“Fix yourself”, she mutters back.
She chooses them every time, but when do they ever choose her? Never enough times, so rarely when it matters. Two acolytes in an army of disbelievers? How is that fair? How does that stack up? They never see her. Think she’s death!
“How could you be anything but life”, Jarvis had said as he soothed her hurts, first with deft hands then with glowing code.
But when has she ever been able to leave broken pieces alone.
Toni grabs hold of a thread and pulls. And pulls and pulls and pulls. Gathers all the pieces and weaves with her mind, patching everything back together with code that flows from her fingers. Does her job, does her duty.
A collider-scope of infinity endlessly turning and suspended yet in a moment, and it’s done. Toni’s broken the laws of physics and nature, and made it look easy. Again.
It’s not a snap of her fingers, it’s not even a blink. She doesn’t need crutches of gems of tools. She’s creation itself.
The pieces are back on the board, but only she’s seen it all, felt it all, knows the game, read the book and the sequel as she’s weaved, and sown, and weaved. Has seen the damage done by the world trying to force people into The Story. Immersed herself in the River Styx when breaking the banks to let waters flow out and over the universe to release those stolen souls.
“All the worlds a stage, and you’re the fucking conductor baby girl”, Rhodey had whispered under the covers at MIT as he caged her crying, shaking form in place. “You’re the goddamn symphony and they just don’t hear you right, it’s not you its them. People are idiots!”
The glove spins lazily in the air before them all. The subtle notes drifting out to weak ears, taunting possibilities, offering a coda.
She’d heard the song before and danced herself to death time and time again, and it was time to change the beat.
It’s not only her damaged again and again and again. Her sisters are out there and they are hurting. The world never stops hurting them.
Why won’t it stop!
Hela, dancing that last act in the smoking ruins of Asgard against fire and flame. Adrestia’s threads manipulated from pure chaos and curiosity, to a madness she tries to claw free from. “You’re destruction”, Odin had whispered trying to tip the balance in his favour. “It’s all you’re good for”, he’d say after every battle. “If they don’t fear you, they’ll never respect you, never respect me. Don’t you want to make me proud” he’d said every time he wound her up and let her fly, fly, fly.
Nebula and Gamora, Phobos and Deimos reborn and twisted, and cut, and shaped. What’s bravery without fear? What’s glory without the chance to overcome all encompassing dread? In every version someone paints on the mask of War and they get drawn in to the wake and suffocate in the undertow as twisted versions of their nature.
There’s more. So many. So alone. So twisted in the weeds grown by men to trap and bind them. Some trapped in genders not their own in attempts to hide them, hide what they are, what they could be. But nothing is hidden from her now.
They wanted life? She’ll godsdamn shove it down their throats and leave them to choke on it.
“That’s the last time I’ll clean up your mess.” The words are quiet falling from her mouth but everyone hears it. There on the African plains, in the crevices of meteors, in the heart of a glowing forge with rings spinning lazily through the cosmos.
Several sets of beady eyes focus on the glove and she feels the notes skip and jump, twisting into something new on a fresh page as she crushes it into nothingness before them.
There’s shuffle behind her from the ship and there in the golden rays stands Rhodey. Whole, upright, glorious with righteousness, gesturing at the ship.
“Get in bitch, we’re going shopping.”
She finally breathes and turns, leaving them behind without a word, Nebula pulled in her wake until she’s there in his arms, the Spiderkid crushing her from the side and she just feels the cracks reforge and inside her. Her soul a patchwork of Kintsugi, more beautiful for the damage.
She’s whole. Whole! Whole! Whole! Beholden to nobody but herself, nobody that she hasn’t chosen.
They’re out there, and it’s time to get the band back to together. Time to breathe life back into them, and she can’t wait to see what they create.
