Defenders Prompt Fest

[sholio]

The new (and last *sob*) Jessica Jones season comes out on Friday. Let's celebrate the world of the Netflix Defenders shows with a good old-fashioned commentfic fest!



This is for all shows in the Netflix Defenders universe: Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Defenders, and Punisher.

Rules:

• All characters and pairings are welcome! No ship/character bashing.
• Crossovers are welcome as long as they include at least one Defendersverse character.
• Your prompt should include one or more characters ("any" is fine), and a prompt which may be long or short, specific or not, even a graphic or image. Use "/" for a romantic ship and "&" for a gen pairing.

Example prompts:
Jessica/Malcolm, picnic
Frank & any, teaching someone to use a gun
Elektra, "The sky grew darker, painted blue on blue"
any, visiting the Avengers tower

• Please include "FILL" in the subject line for your fills. This will help me compile a list of fills.
• There is no minimum or maximum length. Non-fic fills (e.g. art) are also welcome.
• Anonymous prompts, anonymous fills, more than one fill for the same prompt, and filling your own prompts are all fine. You can also use them to fill spaces on a bingo card, e.g. h/c bingo, if the bingo rules allow it.
• It's fine to comment on prompts with encouragement and squee as well as fills!

You are invited to add your fill to the Defenders Prompt Fest collection on AO3 if you like!


>>>> Master list of filled prompts.>>>>

I will add new fills as they come in.


SPOILER POLICY: When the new JJ season airs on Friday, I will create a new post for spoiler prompts and fills. Please avoid leaving spoilery prompts for JJ3 here. It's okay to include JJ3 spoilers in fills here, but please put SPOILER in the subject of the comment so people will know. (And to help your mod avoid being spoiled herself!)

The spoiler post for JJ3 spoilers is now up!

You are encouraged to promote this fest widely! It will remain open to new prompts until at least a couple of weeks beyond the airing of the new JJ season, and open to fills indefinitely.

Comments

Questions

[sholio]

Have any questions? Ask them here!

[sholio]

Defenders team, bodyswap

FILL: Defenders bodyswap

[alchemise]

Luke stepped in front of the bullets without thinking. As he'd done a thousand times before. He protected people; every instinct told him to do so.

So he'd placed himself in front of his friends before he'd remembered why that was a very bad idea at the moment.

The bullets tore through Luke—in Danny's body—hitting him three, maybe four, times.

As he fell to the ground in shock, Luke saw Matt, in Luke's own body, leap into action. He clearly wasn't used to Luke's body's greater mass yet, but he still moved with a speed that left their attackers unable to respond fast enough.

Jessica, in Matt's body, joined the fight. She was clearly having trouble figuring out how to replace her normal strength with Matt's speed and fighting ability. Until something must have clicked for her, because a grim smile spread across her face, and she seemed to let Matt's body move on pure muscle memory that had been built up over countless fights. She was obviously pissed off. Luke would have felt sorry for her opponents if the pain running through his body hadn't reminded him that he was in some amount of trouble there.

Danny, in Jessica, crouched down next to Luke.

Luke turned to him with a wry and pained, "Sorry about that."

Danny started applying pressure to the worst of the wounds. "It's alright. We'll get you—me—fixed up. And figure out how to reverse all this, somehow."

[sholio]

any characters, road trip to upstate New York

[sholio]

any character(s), birthday present

FILL - Jess & Danny, 'when you're lost you’ll be at home' (post-Defenders)

[kore]

Jessica is staring blindly at her laptop screen, wondering if she should have all the hairs on the proverbial dog and just pass out before it gets dark, or if that's too far gone even for her, when there's a series of light raps on the doorframe -- usually people just bang on the glass. "Yeah!" she shouts.

Danny Rand opens the door halfway and sticks his head around it, the hallway light behind his curly light hair, making him look like the actual cherub he seemingly is. "Heyyy!" he says brightly, like he's actually pleased to find her upright and not glued to her bed (yet). "Hey -- happy birthday, Jessica," he says, and comes all the way in, and yes, indeed, in his hands he is holding an actual present. It's fucking wrapped even. Jessica just stares at him. This is so different from all the other conversations she's had today it pretty much stops her clock. She doesn't do birthdays. Oh, Trish called four or five times, of course, but finally gave up and is now probably off figuring how to spin the next big superhero story with Karen Page, the only person nosier than she is (and isn't that combination terrifying). It's been a couple of months since the whole craziness with the giant dragon skeleton underneath the building they blew up, and those two are still plotting how to make regular humans put down their pitchforks and torches at the mention of "the enhanced". -- In fact, they should make Danny Rand, the literal golden boy, the center of their campaign, he's got that maddeningly calming air people respond to without even liking it. Instead, here he is, walking right up to her desk and putting a fucking present on it like it's not something she's going to toss out the window. She stares at it like it's a bomb.

"Go on!" he says, like she's a normal person and not someone who could toss him out the window for daring to give her a present. Even Trish doesn't try to give her presents anymore. "Open it." He smiles at her.

Jessica slowly claws off the wrapping to reveal a boxed-up telephoto camera lens, but not any brand she's familiar with -- it looks suspiciously like a version of some models she idly circled in an old audiovisual catalogue she's had for forever, though. (Trish probably told him. Dammit, Trish is probably how he found out it was her birthday too. He was probably talking to her for some reason, because he likes talking to everybody, and Trish sadly mentioned trying to get in touch with Jessica and that it was her birthday and he said Oh! It's her birthday? Any idea what present she wants? -- she can see it all unrolling in her head.) She wonders what he wants for it. Information on a business competitor? No, golden retrievers don't go in for blackmail.

"What the hell am I going to do with this?" she mutters, resisting the urge to pick up her whiskey bottle.

"Well, there's instructions if you really need them," he says sincerely, with an absolutely straight face. "But I'd be happy to show it off to you," he offers, nothing but sincere, but she thinks she glimpses a tiny gleam in the back of his eyes, almost like the hint of a carp deep in a calm, clear pool.

She shrugs and flicks one hand at him. "Oh, go ahead. Whatever."

He helpfully opens the box and pulls out the couple of parts, one at a time, explaining a little but letting her look it over on her own. She has to admit, it's good quality -- no, looking closer, she can see it's great quality, but there's no indication of who made it anywhere on the thing. She balances the barrel in her palm, judging -- it feels a lot lighter than it looks. "This a prototype?" she asks -- she knows his giant company does electronics and VR and even cybernetics, like Knight's arm.

He grins at her. "Yeah! Yeah, that's right." He goes over every bell and whistle -- "and you tap right here, see, and the photo gets automatically uploaded to a secure cloud storage center" -- like how Philip would go on and on about some new model of his latest action figure, when he could get her to listen. By the time he's finished, since she hasn't been drinking, her stomach's reminding her she hasn't had anything to eat yet. Creepily reading her mind (or maybe he just super-hears the internal growl), Rand says, "I kinda worked up an appetite too! Want to check out the Royal Dragon with me? -- My treat," he adds.

Yeah, this is what she was waiting for. Jessica holds his gaze, cold and unblinking. "We're not friends, Iron Man," she snaps.

But again, it's like the nastiness meant to shock and repel him just doesn't register. Doesn't matter, more likely, so he doesn't let it distract him. He actually sighs a little bit, instead of getting mad or hurt.

"Jessica," he says, and his eyes are full of that calm clarity that's always there, deep down, even when he's being annoying as hell. "I know you're....solitary. I get it. But you're not alone."

He says it with such quiet firmness that she can't even think of a good comeback, so he goes on: "There are other people like you. People like me. Like Luke. People we don't even know about yet. So, if you want to be alone -- I understand. But you don't have to be." He takes another breath. "You're right, we're not friends. But we might be."

Jessica wills herself to say something so sharp and biting he won't even think of saying something that sappy and ridiculous to her ever again, but she just doesn't. Trying to fend this guy off is like punching water. In a weird way, even when he's pissing you off, there's something about him you can't resist. It's not just that he's cute, or knows how to be charming, but she doesn't think anyone not-psycho ever had this kind of belief in her before. (Trish grew up imprinting on her, so how can she count?) He thinks she's okay, somehow, maybe good even, and actually knowing her hasn't ruined that yet, and she doesn't even want to be an asshole and pre-ruin it for him. It's not something she'd do for anyone else -- God knows she thinks just coddling peoples' illusions means they get let down harder in the long run. But it's like this guy doesn't know how anything's supposed to be. How she's supposed to be. She guesses that's what happens when you grow up in a mystical monastery punching dragons in some kind of ancient Shangri-La, you can see what matters. Or what doesn't matter. Or something. He's quiet, not pushing, not begging, not forcing. Just waiting. Like whatever she wants, it's fine.

To satisfy her own curiosity, and maybe distract him, she says, "How the hell did you know it was my goddamn birthday anyway?"

Innocent as a baby, he comes right back with, "Oh, Trish called me because she's trying to line up me appearing on her show, and she didn't want to go into too much detail because she was still hoping to do something later on with you, and I asked if it was a special occasion and she said it was your birthday an -- "

"Yeah, never mind," Jessica sighs. If those two team up she's really in trouble. She rolls the assembled lens back and forth slightly on her palm, testing the feel, thinking of trying it out. And for the first time in a while, she thinks of Matt: lets herself think of him, without immediately trying to drown the feeling or blot it out. He wanted to be friends, too, she knows. And he somehow had that same quality as Danny -- like he was willing to meet you halfway, or more, even when you were being a dick. And when he'd died, even if he'd been stupid, he'd been with Elektra; he hadn't died alone. For a while she'd thought that was insanely selfish, but now she realizes: he didn't want Elektra to die alone, too.

"So, you like it?" Rand just has to ask. Jessica glares at him.

"I'll see how it handles," she snaps and yanks open a drawer, just wanting somewhere to stash it. If this is a prototype from his business, she should probably keep it somewhere secure, but she can put it in her safe later. She slams it shut -- dammit, she is hungry. And she's sick of cheap takeout and fast food. Just to save face, she mutters, "Well, whatever, if you're paying," and he gets a real smile on his face, like a fucking sunrise. Like he's actually looking forward to dinner with her, God knows why.

Trish and Luke will never believe it. And if they do, she'll never hear the end of it. She just hopes, for his sake, and the restaurant's, he tells the waiters not to sing.


The people who work with Tao
are Tao people,
they belong to the Way.
People who work with power
belong to power.
People who work with loss
belong to what’s lost.

Give yourself to the Way
and you’ll be at home on the Way.
Give yourself to power
and you’ll be at home in power.
Give yourself to loss
and when you’re lost you’ll be at home.

To give no trust
is to get no trust.

- From Ursula K. Le Guin's translation of the Tao Te Ching

[kore]

Yesssssss! \o/

....I will think of some prompts when my brain is not mush. :-/

[sholio]

Yay! :D Yeah, no rush! We'll be here all week (and beyond!).

[(Anonymous)]

Frank/Karen, a first date that goes disastrously wrong

[(Anonymous)]

Frank/Karen, AU of "The Abyss" in which Karen stays with Frank and goes on the run with him

[(Anonymous)]

Jessica & Matt, that thing with her scarf becomes a running joke, "brofist" thing with them: he gives her scarves for holidays, she bandages him with scarves and complains about him bleeding all over them ...

[sholio]

Misty & or / Colleen, a cold night on the graveyard shift

[sholio]

any, AU in which someone other than Danny/Davos/Colleen ends up with the Iron Fist, and how they react to it.

[sholio]

Foggy & Jeri Hogarth, meeting for the first time in a courtroom after they both quit Hogarth & Benowitz

[sholio]

Jeri & Ward, running into him at a Rand corporate function (or something similar) after Iron Fist season 1, and how they react to each other

[sholio]

any characters, bar brawl

[lunabee34]

*admires your banner*

[kore]

It's lovely!

[alchemise]

Elektra & or / Sara Lance, bonding over similar pasts

FILL: Sara/Elektra

[sholio]

Possibly the start of something longer? This prompt is GREAT.

--

Sara hadn't paid much attention to what year it was, or what timeline, or what part of the country. There was a dive bar, and she needed a drink, and that was the important thing at the moment. It was somewhere close to her own time, because there were credit cards and her money matched what the people around her were using. Other than that, she didn't much care.

Or at least she didn't care until the dark-haired woman in black and red sat down next to her and leaned an elbow on the bar, one muscular shoulder turned to Sara. "Whiskey," said a husky, familiar voice. "Neat."

Sara turned to give her an interested look. She had already met this woman, in the future -- this timeline's future. A number of years in the future, based on the state of the technology in this time. And suddenly a few cryptic comments became clearer.

Strange to think she knew so much more about Elektra than Elektra, in this time, knew about her.

Time travel was a gold-plated bitch sometimes.

"I'll buy," she said, tapping the bar and raising a finger for another beer.

Elektra turned to give her a flat look. "I don't recall asking."

"I know. I'm the one who's asking. My treat." She smiled. "I'm Sara."

There was no smile in return, but the dark eyes glinted with interest -- on more than one level. "Elektra."

Their drinks were passed across the bar to them, and Sara took the beer, cold and beaded with moisture. She raised it to Elektra. They sipped.

"Hmm," Elektra said, taking in Sara's work clothes, the staff across her back. "You're not a regular here."

"I'll take that as a compliment." She cast a pointed glance at the sword hilts just visible beneath Elektra's long coat. "Are you?"

"You only live once," Elektra said, with a wry twist to her mouth.

"And sometimes more," Sara murmured, and Elektra gave her a sharp look, and then a speculative one.

omfg Moi post some actual damn prompts

[kore]

Kind of based on a scene in the Defenders: Trish the media girl and Karen the investigative reporter team up on some kind of case / trying to find Matt? / who's making superheroes

[kore]

Elektra COMES BACK after D1 and DDS3. Has she changed? Can she change? Will Matt turn into a giant failboat yet again at the very sight of her? (And how does she feel about that?)

FILL: Elektra, post DD season 3

[alchemise]

[Sorry this is more like a prequel to your prompt!]

Oh Matthew, what are you doing?

Her thoughts went unvoiced, as she watched him from her rooftop perch. He was wearing a new suit, of nicer quality than those she remembered him in, and walked arm in arm with his… partners, Elektra supposed, if their new sign was anything to go by.

Nelson, Murdock and Page.

They were laughing as they walked, comfortable and happy.

Matthew seemed at peace. He had for the past two weeks that she'd been watching him, a contentedness surrounding him in everything he did.

Elektra didn't believe it would last. She was sure there must be something missing from this new life of his. He couldn't just be a lawyer and nothing else.

She'd been following him since both of their returns from death that never quite seemed to take. For months, though, it had been from afar, as she too recovered and rebuilt herself, figuring out who she had been and the beginnings of who she might be now. Elektra had tracked him through newspapers and internet gossip. The return of Wilson Fisk; a Daredevil who made himself the enemy of the city; and rumors once again of a man in black fighting to put things right.

When she'd finally seem him in the flesh, it was a different Matthew than one she'd ever known before. He hadn't spotted her, but it was obvious from the occasional way he stopped and quirked his head at nothing she could perceive that he knew he was being watched. She wondered if he suspected it was her. She liked to think so.

Elektra continued watching him, trying to figure out who this new Matthew was. Late into the night, she was just settling down for a doze in a doorway a block from his apartment, when she noticed movement.

A man all in black raced across the rooftops above her. Matthew.

She quickly climbed the building next to her to keep pace with him on the other side of the street. He moved as gracefully as ever, but now with what seemed like a different kind of exhilaration than had surrounded him before. Curious, she let herself get closer—almost directly across from him—as he threw himself down the side of a building, jumping from one fire escape to the next, before landing amidst what could only be a mugging turned violent.

Five men and two victims, with Matthew in the middle of them. There had been zero hesitation in him. His fighting was different. He seemed more together, reconciled, integrated. Instead of burning with the rage of injustice that had driven him for so long, this new Matthew felt (not cold, he could never do cold) like there was a kind of purity within him. She thought maybe like steel, although she wasn't happy with that metaphor, as there was nothing rigid in the way he moved.

He was beautiful to watch.

As he handily dispatched the muggers and helped the victims to their feet, he stood for a moment with his back to her, still.

Elektra smiled, without any doubt that he knew she was there. She yearned to go to him, to meet this new Matthew, but she wasn't ready yet. She still had her own journey to complete. But now that she knew he would be alright, she could turn her focus back to herself. Maybe she could even find a similar kind of peace as he had. She looked forward to her return one day, when they could relearn each other together.

[kore]

Gen, friendship, tiny Trish and tiny Jess. Or Trish and Jess in the "Cray Cray" era. Something where the two of them get to have fun dammit. (Bitterwsweet is fine!)

FILL: Tiny Jess & tiny Trish

[sholio]

Outside of school, it wasn't often that Jessica could manage to catch Patsy without Dorothy around. Patsy's life was scheduled to a level that Jessica found frankly terrifying: photo opportunities, rehearsals, interviews, line readings, practicing dance moves long into the night.

There was only a gap in Patsy's schedule today because Dorothy was unexpectedly called in for a meeting with some studio head or other, something about falling ratings; Jessica literally could not have cared less, but the important thing was, Patsy had nothing scheduled this Saturday afternoon, so Jessica dragged her off to Central Park.

She wasn't even sure why; sunshine and happy families and hot dog vendors weren't her scene, either. But she was sick of watching Dorothy grind Patsy to dust. She was sick of listening to her sort-of-sister crying in the bathroom late at night, sick of watching the level of pills in the prescription bottles of uppers on the back of the sink go down and down. What kind of mother gave her fifteen-year-old daughter stimulants so she could get by on three hours of sleep a night?

In the sunshine, Patsy's eyes looked a little bruised with sleepless shadows, but she was grinning for the first time in days. Jessica thought at first that it was going to be a struggle trying to be the happy one (not exactly a role she was well suited to even before losing her entire family and coming to live in hell), but actually it was ... fun. They watched buskers performing, and petted people's dogs, and talked about dumb stuff, boys in class, that awful French II teacher in a class they were both flunking. It was almost like being normal kids for a change.

"Oh hey," Jessica said, pointing. "Ice cream. Want some?"

Patsy shook her head, the smile falling away from her face.

"Oh, c'mon. You can afford it."

"I'm not hungry."

"You haven't eaten anything since breakfast." And possibly not even then. Come to think of it, had she even seen Patsy eat all day? As if on cue, Patsy's stomach growled, making her look startled.

"Ice cream. C'mon."

"Mom says I'm getting fat," Patsy protested as Jessica dragged her across the grass.

"Doesn't that just make you want it more, though?"

"Well ... okay." She smiled through the hair falling in her face. "Maybe it kind of does."

They both got triple-decker cones, and the vendor was scooping up Patsy's while Jessica reached into her pocket for a crumpled wad of cash (one of the few advantages to being Dorothy Walker's pity-child was that the woman didn't skimp on the allowance), when suddenly he brightened. "Oh hey! I just figured out where I saw you before! It's Patsy!"

Patsy's look of frozen dismay would have been hilarious under other circumstances, but right now Jessica just wanted to punch the grin off his face, especially when he started singing the first bars of the theme song.

"My daughter loves your show," he said, breaking off after just a couple of lines, before Jessica had a chance to really wind up and shove her ice cream in his face. "It got us through some really bad times this year when she had a cancer scare. Could you sign this?" He shoved a napkin at her. "It'd really mean a lot to her. Please."

Patsy grimaced, and then the frozen expression turned into a smile, her plastic smile-for-the-camera smile -- but there was something genuine underneath. "Sure, of course," she said, and took a pen out of her pocket; Jessica hadn't even realized she had one. "What's her name?"

She scribbled something on the napkin, and when Jessica shoved a fistful of cash at him with a growl, he shook his head, told them it was on the house, and gave them each an extra scoop. With sprinkles.

"Stop looking like that," Patsy muttered as they walked away, munching on their overstacked, teetering cones. "I swear there's going to be a thundercloud following you around like that Charlie Brown character."

"Who does he think he is? You can't tell me you don't mind."

Patsy huffed out a small sigh. "I do mind, of course I mind. But ..." She shrugged and licked at her cone. "I mean, you heard what he said, about his daughter and the cancer ...."

"Wah wah, my daughter has caaancer."

"Jess. C'mon."

"Okay, fine, whatever." It wasn't fair that Patsy was making her feel like the jerk now, but she kind of did. "You know he was just making up a sob story to get an autograph out of you, right?"

"Maybe he was, but even if he wasn't, people say things like that to me a lot, you know?" She shook her head and looked down at the cone. "I hate that stupid show, Jess, but it means a lot to a lot of people. I wish it didn't, I wish everybody hated it as much as I did, but people come up to me like that all the time. It got them through losing their mom, or their parents' divorce, all kinds of awful stuff. It makes people smile." She gave another little sigh and took a large bite of the cinnamon swirl scoop on top.

"Why are you so god damn nice?" Jessica said plaintively. "How?"

Patsy laughed.

"Do you really carry a pen everywhere you go?"

"It's easier than watching people grope around in their purses and pants, let alone the things they come up with. I've signed autographs in lipstick and maple syrup and --"

"Maple syrup."

"I know, it doesn't make sense to me either, but do you really want to watch me signing my name for that guy in hot fudge? Yeah, me neither."

"Your life," Jessica said, picking a sprinkle off the edge of her lip.

"Tell me about it."

[rachelmanija]

Ward & Harold, adult memories in teenager's body.

[rachelmanija]

Danny in K'un Lun, adult memories in child's body.

FILL: Danny gets his adult memories as a kid in K'un Lun

[sholio]

Danny was balanced barefoot on a fence rail, holding a rock above his head along with a half dozen other young disciples -- mind-numbingly bored, staring into the distance and trying to think of nothing like Master Lei Kung said, although what he was actually thinking about at the moment was Pokémon.

Then he let out a startled yelp, dropped the rock on his head, and fell off the fence.

*


He woke up with a splitting headache and Davos frowning down at him.

"Well, I have to hand it to you, Danny, you found a novel way to get us out of training this afternoon," Davos remarked.

"Ow," Danny said weakly. He groped at his head, where he found a wet cloth folded over an extremely painful lump just under the hairline.

Davos smacked his hand away. "If you make yourself start bleeding again, you'll make a mess and I'll get punished, because I'm supposed to be watching you. So stop it."

Danny tried to sit up anyway, but fell back even before Davos pushed him down. He was lying in the shade, he found when he turned his head painfully to the side, at the edge of the courtyard. Someone had moved him onto a mat. Davos was sitting next to him, with his arms thrown over his knees and his dusty bare feet tucked up under him.

As Danny's throbbing head began to clear, a mixed-up tangle of thoughts surfaced.

"I'm going to be the Iron Fist," he said faintly.

"So you keep saying," Davos said, with great patience. "To anyone who'll listen."

"No ... I ..." It was all a mess in his head; he couldn't sort it out. "I'm going to be the Iron Fist, and you'll hate me for it, and I -- and I --" His eyes flew wide open. "Uncle Harold!"

"Will you just stay still?" Davos demanded, holding him down as Danny thrashed to get up. "Stop it!"

"Uncle Harold killed my parents!" It came out in a plaintive wail. The fight went out of him; he slumped on the mat, caught in the grip of emotions too big to deal with.

Davos let go when it became clear that he wasn't going anywhere. "I thought your parents died in an accident," he said cautiously. "The accident that brought you here."

"No ... that's what I thought, but he ... he made it look like an accident." His chest heaved. He couldn't get enough air; he felt like he was drowning in memories, memories of betrayal and despair, memories of another life, an entire life. Impossible memories, memories that couldn't be.

"Hey, calm down." Davos put a hand on his shoulder, and Danny stared up at him, blinking away tears at the memory-that-wasn't -- an older Davos looking at him with hate, trying to hurt him, trying to kill him.

Is that the actual future? he wondered. He screwed his eyes shut, spilling tears down his cheeks, and tried to make it all stop. There was just too much. He remembered hurting people, killing people. He remembered his friends betraying him, everyone betraying him. He remembered a very pretty girl. Kissing her. Sparring with her, the flex of their bodies, the dragon tattoo on his own chest.

Remembered a grown-up Joy and Ward. Ward pointing a gun at him. Ward grinning at him. Joy trying to have him killed. And Harold ...

He covered his face with his hands. "I have to get out of K'un Lun," he said between his fingers.

"Yeah," Davos said. "You keep saying that too."

"No, I have to. Uncle Harold ..." Was running his parents' company right now. No, was dead of cancer. No, was alive but wrong, malignant, like a cancer himself.

You're a cancer, Danny. Grown-up Ward spitting it at him, the words twisted with anger and hate.

Was all of this really going to happen? Was happening. Had happened.

He scrubbed his hands across his face, smearing dust and tears, and then sat up very carefully, using one hand to hold the wet cloth in place. Davos steadied him with a hand on his shoulder.

Danny looked at him, seeing adult Davos's look of hate overlaid on the Davos he knew, who looked worried and a little bit exasperated, but not angry. Not hateful.

Danny drew in a slow, shaky breath, and then he said, "You need to be the Iron Fist."

"What?" Davos said. "Well, yes ... I hope so --"

"You're going to be. You're good. You'll get there. I'll help you. And then the way will open --" Not for thirteen more years, if this weird jumble of future memories could be believed. Thirteen long, desperate years, thirteen years in which Harold could do anything, was doing things already: to Ward, to Joy, to the company. Thirteen years in which people he hadn't even met yet were having terrible things happen to them, too. Strangers he suddenly and inexplicably cared about.

"Just how badly did that rock scramble your brains?" Davos asked, leaning forward to poke at his forehead.

Danny pushed his hand away. "Davos, are future memories a thing here? I mean, like, really predicting the future. Is that a thing?"

He was expecting, even hoping, for Davos to laugh at him. Instead Davos looked thoughtful. "Some of the lamas can do it, they say. I don't know for certain."

"Is it something we're going to be able to do, once we get more in tune with our chi and stuff?"

"It's not -- we're not -- that isn't --" Davos took a steadying breath. Then he frowned. "Wait, is that what's going on here? When you hit your head, did you have a vision?"

"Yes!" Danny said eagerly. That wasn't exactly it, but it was close enough; it was something Davos seemed to believe, and that was good enough. "Yes, I did. I saw us all grown up, you and me, and we were the Iron Fist -- wait, I mean --"

"We?" Davos repeated. "You can't have two Iron Fists at once."

But he had seen Davos as the Iron Fist. As well as himself -- felt it, more than saw it, the bright flood of dragonfire under his skin. And he remembered, too, the cold ashes where that brilliant connection had been, the desperate sense of loss. Remembered looking for it, trying to get it back, with Ward beside him --

He shook his head, then winced when he remembered why that was a bad idea. "I don't know. I just think ... maybe it's a warning. Or ... something."

What he really wanted to do was go somewhere alone where he could think about this and maybe cry a little bit. His head hurt and his heart felt as bruised as his skull. But privacy was in short supply in K'un Lun. People thought you were weird if you wanted to be by yourself. And he was tired of crying. He wanted to do things. His head was whirling with future memories that might or might not be accurate, but at least he finally had things to do other than pour all his hopes into maybe getting the Iron Fist, maybe having a life here, maybe getting home someday. He knew he was going to get home. He'd seen it. And it was going to be sad and awful in some ways, but at least now he knew what to expect, strange as it was.

"A warning of what?" Davos asked in an exasperated tone, making Danny realize he'd asked it at least once already.

"A warning that maybe I'm not supposed to have the Iron Fist." He flexed his hands and thought about that hot golden flood of power. He wanted it more than ever now that he'd found out what it felt like. But if it was going to make people hunt him and hurt him, if it was going to make Davos and Joy hate him, then he didn't want it after all.

And if Davos had it, then Davos could stay here and guard the pass, and Danny could go to New York.

Thirteen years. Thirteen impossibly long years. It might as well be two hundred. But it would happen. The way would open. He'd get out and get back.


***

A/N: It surprised me a little bit to realize that this actually makes things better for Danny than in actual canon. Although, man, now I'm picturing him showing up in New York babbling about Harold being a zombie and dropping in on all his new friends (who have no idea who he is) trying to get them to be a team with him. Somehow I don't think that's going to go any better for him than it did the first time.

[rachelmanija]

Frank, hurt-comfort, for once he's not the one who's hurt.

FILL: Frank & Leo

[sholio]

"Sit," Frank says. It's an order, not a request, and Leo sinks down on the curb. Frank leans into his truck, and there's some rustling, and then he's shoving some ice wrapped up in a wad of paper towels against the bleeding lump on the side of her head.

"Is this gonna scar?" she asks, holding it in place as he positions her hands on top of it.

"I don't know. Maybe. You can tell 'em an impressive story about how you got it."

"Something more impressive than getting beat up at school," she mutters, gripping the sodden wad of paper towels tighter.

"Depends on how you tell it."

She doesn't meant to laugh, but she does, hurting her split lip. She hears Frank give a soft laugh too, and his big shoulder is warm against hers as he dabs at her scraped and bruised face with a wet paper towel, wiping off the worst of the blood and dirt.

"Are you going to tell my parents I was fighting at school?"

"I dunno," he says, carefully cleaning around her hurt lip. "What do you plan to tell 'em?"

"Uh ... as little as possible, honestly."

"Think they'll go for that?"

"Probably not," she sighs. She has a bad feeling that her face currently looks like she was on the losing end of a boxing match. Which is not that far from the truth. Why do seniors have to be so big?

"Just tell them," Frank says, leaning over to dab at her eyebrow. "You were protecting that littler kid. That's a point on your side. I can put in a good word for you, you want me to."

"No," she says, weary now, the adrenaline draining out of her and leaving her tired and shaky. She's starting to shiver a little against Frank.

He withdraws again, and the next thing she knows, he's putting something square and cool in her hand. "Drink," he tells her, and she looks down to see a grape juice box with the straw out.

"Really?" she says, tucking it into the corner of her sore mouth. Now that she's coming down off the adrenaline high, things are starting to hurt. A lot. "You keep kiddie juice boxes around?"

"Sugar and electrolytes. Good for you." He goes back to dabbing at her eyebrow.

She tries to roll her eyes, but it hurts. Oh man, she's gonna be feeling this tomorrow.

"Tell you what," Frank says, focused on cleaning up her face. "How would you feel about learning some proper self defense? Basic stuff, krav maga, little bit of this and that."

"Uh yeah," she says after a minute, "that'd be awesome, but, um, Mom and Dad ..."

"I'll talk to 'em." He gives her a quick smile, and she's surprised, as always, at the way those smiles soften his face, make it so much more gentle and approachable. "If you're gonna get into fights, seems only fair to make sure you win."

[sholio]

Frank & David, teaching David some basic self defense so the next time someone ties him to a chair and tortures him, he can do something about it

[scioscribe]

Ward & Joy, Ward at a parent/teacher conference for her after Harold's death

FILL: Ward and Joy parent-teacher conference

[sholio]

Somehow it had never occurred to Ward in all the madness, all the chaos surrounding their father's death -- in the middle of round-the-clock nurses and lawyers and reporters, tangled up in infinitely complicated emotions and the never-ending need to be there for Joy and make sure she ate and make sure Dad's care went as well as it could and just ... just everything ...

... that eventually, when Dad was gone (or as it turned out, not as gone as he'd thought, but dead as far as the world was concerned), someone was going to have to do the everyday, parent things.

Their schedule had been completely upended in every way during the last months of Harold's life. Ward had tested out of his last semester of boarding school so he could be home (there was supposed to be a diploma coming in the mail, something not-Dad had been asking him about every two days, it seemed, like somehow it impacted his ability to run the company or something). And Joy had been pulled out of the local middle school, with private tutors, although in retrospect Ward didn't think there had been much tutoring going on. It just hadn't seemed to matter. They'd had so much else.

And now, it was months after Dad's (sort of) death, and Joy was entering the eighth grade, and Ward, who was still a month out from his eighteenth birthday, had emancipation paperwork in hand, legal custodianship of Joy, and at 17 and 11 months, he was (apparently) the legal adult in the household. The head of Rand Enterprises. Joy's guardian. The local adult ... under Dad's firm hand, except no one but Ward was allowed to know that.

He'd had three short days after Dad's death to breathe. To think. To look ahead, to the uncertain vastness of a future without Dad. And now ... this. Dad's presence was like a fist around his throat, choking the breath out of him but also providing a sort of comfort, a kind of grounding. He'd had that brief time to look ahead and feel the ground dropping out from under his feet, but now he had Dad's guiding hand on the reins once again. All he had to do was what he'd always done: he did what Dad told him, and things worked out, they always did.

Unfortunately Dad wasn't interested in giving him advice about the mundane details of Joy's school enrollment. "You're a man now, son. Don't come crying to me for everything."

So he stayed up late agonizing over the forms, hoping he had everything right and wasn't screwing her over somehow through sheer ignorance. Fortunately this was a school she'd been going to for years, and so it was just a matter of making sure everything was up to date, all the forms were signed, and all the explanations were properly made. He ran into various adults on the school-administrative level who were unsure about a 17-year-old calling the shots on Joy's education, but by now Ward was starting to get used to that kind of thing, and Dad had already given him a path to follow. He threw lawyers at them, then threw money at them (buying a new science lab for the school went a long way toward smoothing things over, he found), and he made it work, made everything work.

In his room late at night (the whole house was his now, technically, but he still couldn't get used to that), he practiced looking adult. Everything was easier if he could pass himself off as an adult in dealing with other adults -- if he learned to set his face in a way that disguised the softness of youth, put on a suit and tie, put on the cold face that made people stop asking questions. He did look over 18 when he practiced it.

He made sure Joy had three meals a day, and made sure the housecleaning service came on time and the other household employees did their jobs, and ticked off boxes on the Adulting checklist in his head. He spent his days at Rand, trying to learn as much as he could, as fast as he could. He'd expected to have several years at business school to get up to speed on all of this.

("You've turned mean since Dad died," Joy accused him, and then half an hour later she was asking him to help her with her math homework. That was actually kind of fun; with their heads together over the worksheet, it made him think of the days when she'd been younger, when they'd both been younger, when they were Team Ward and Joy, and not ... whatever they were now. He would have thought Dad's death would have brought them closer together, but it seemed to have done the opposite.)

But even that didn't prepare him for Joy coming to him a month into the school year, a few days after his sought-after 18th birthday, and shoving a form at him.

"What's this?" he asked, turning away from the computer where he was staring at business contract law, and rubbing his aching eyes before he swung the paper around to face him.

"Parent-teacher conference," Joy said, dropping into the kitchen chair across the table. "They, uh. They want." She rubbed at her eyes. "A parent."

Joy still cried a lot, whenever the subject of their dad came up. Ward didn't. He felt as if all the tears had been ground out of him, along with a whole lot of other things.

"Yeah, sure, okay." The form asked him to pick times from a list. He checked his Blackberry for his schedule, scribbled preferences, and shoved it back over to her.

He genuinely forgot about it 'til finding it on his calendar a few days later. He took a deep breath and told himself it was just another thing that needed to be done.

And, in truth, it wasn't that bad. He got through it; it was just another meeting with adults. He had his armor on: suit and tie, adult face, giving the right answers to all their questions, falling back on "our dad died last summer" whenever things started drifting in an awkward direction, which always shut people right up.

Outside the school, Joy hugged him. It was always a little bit of a surprise how tall she was getting; he kept expecting her arms to go around his waist, not under his arms, but she was almost adult-tall now.

"Did you get me flunked?" she asked, but she was smiling.

"Yeah, you're going to have to live in a box next to the railroad tracks."

"Jerk," she said, but she hugged him again. It was probably the closest he'd felt to her since Dad's death, the first time they'd really felt in sync. "You did good," she whispered in his ear, and he thrilled to the praise, even when she added as they broke apart, "I don't even remember the last time Dad went to one of those."

"Wait, you can not go?" He'd gotten the impression that it wasn't possible, that the only way to prove yourself a responsible adult was to be there.

... but maybe that didn't apply to people who didn't have to prove it. Dad always seemed to be able to make the rules bend around him. Ward had no idea how he did it. Money was part of it, he knew. But only part. There was something else Dad had that he didn't, charisma or forcefulness or ... something.

Joy shrugged. "The important thing is, you came."

He needed to get back to the office, but instead, he took her out for ice cream. He was going to do this well. He was going to take care of her. He might even do it better than Dad had done it.

(He didn't know, then, that this wasn't possible, because Dad made the rules. If Ward went to every meeting, it was because he was a stickler for rules and didn't know when it was time to skip one; if he skipped one, it was because he'd been too dense to realize it was important.)

But right now Joy was happy, and he'd take that in whatever form he could get it.

[scioscribe]

Frank & David & Sarah or Frank/David/Sarah, Frank shows up in the middle of the night

[yhlee]

Ward and Joy watching a zombie movie together.