Tuesday: Reincarnation

[mahmfic.livejournal.com]

Hi guys! I'm mahmfic, back for another week of hosting here at comment_fic! Today's theme is Reincarnation. Interpret as you wish.

The rules still haven't changed:
No more than five prompts in a row.
No more than three prompts in the same fandom.
No spoilers in prompts.
If your fill contains spoilers, warn and leave plenty of space.

Prompts should be formatted as follows:
Fandom, Character+/Character, Prompt

Some examples...
+ Firefly, River, she remembered being someone else
+ Sherlock BBC, Lestrade/Sherlock, Why do we keep meeting like this?
+ Merlin BBC, Arthur/Merlin, Merlin didn't expect to run into his king at the coffee shop

Not feeling any of today’s prompts? Visit the lonely prompt archive and brighten someone’s day. For more recent prompts to write, you can also use LJ’s advanced search options to limit keyword results to only comments in this community.lonely prompt archive and brighten someone’s day. For more recent prompts to write, you can also use LJ’s advanced search options to limit keyword results to only comments in this community.

tag=reincarnation

Comments

[daria234.livejournal.com]

MCU, Bucky/Steve or any, he's been more people than he can count

fill

[likewinning.livejournal.com]

With them he was a weapon. A sharp knife, a cold bullet. A blunt object or an explosion – whatever the mission called for. He has been more people, for them, than he can even begin to remember. Charmers, spies; ghosts, demons. For half a century, he turned himself into anything they needed in order to finish the job.

He has worn so very many masks.

It’s supposed to be different with Steve. The training is supposed to fall away for those moments when they’re alone together, when they’re having dinner or watching a movie, when they’re curled around each other or sleeping on separate sides of the bed.

It’s supposed to be different, and sometimes it is – but sometimes he catches himself talking and acting like Bucky instead of being him. Some memories, some things he does, are still informed – he remembers because he is told about them, not because he actually –

He wonders, sometimes, if underneath Bucky there isn’t another layer, another person he might be. But this one – Bucky – this one can light up Steve’s eyes, can make him smile and laugh and bite down hard on his lip to keep from crying out when they’re wrapped up tight together. This one has seen the goodness in Steve’s heart, the goodness in others through Steve.

With Steve, he is more than all the other people he has been. He may not be Bucky entirely yet, not the one Steve fell in love with decades ago, the one Steve stopped just about everything to save, but he wants to be. He does.

[daria234.livejournal.com]

Terminator:SCC or any series with AI/cyborgs/androids, any, a cyborg's consciousness in a different body

[daria234.livejournal.com]

MCU, the male Avengers find out that they are all reincarnated fairy tale princesses (and Natasha is the reincarnated Big Bad Wolf? Natasha can be anyone you want :)

Fill: Untitled, Avengers Ensemble, gen Part 1/2

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

"I do not truly think that I can be a reincarnated fairy tale princess," Thor said, frowning. "I am older than all of your fairy tales."

"Oh, sure," Clint grumbled. "Rub it in. Meanwhile, I'm stuck being the reincarnation of Maid Marian."

Steve frowned, creasing his brow. "I'm not sure that Maid Marian really counts as a fairy tale princess."

"She was in a Disney musical about Robin Hood! She totally counts!"

Tony stared at Clint in disbelief. "She was an animated fox in that version. Anyway, Maid Marian wasn't an archer. Merida, on the other hand--"

Clint groaned. "I didn't even LIKE that movie!"

"It's true," Natasha added. "He complained about Merida's archery through the whole thing."

"You went to see Brave," Tony stated, visibly trying not to blink at the news. "With Clint."

"In Budapest," Natasha said with a small shrug. Tony muttered something about that finally giving him a timeline for Budapest and scribbled a note on a Post-It pad.

Clint paid no attention. "There has to be another princess who's an archer!"

"I'll trade you," Bruce said with a sigh. "Me being the Beast's Beauty...it just seems like the universe was in a sadistic mood when that decision was made."

"I can't figure out which one I am," Steve said, flipping through various fairy tale books as if they were tomes on genealogy.

Tony snorted. "Snow White. Duh. Pure of heart, spent years in a coffin of crystal while in a state of suspended animation--who else would you be?"

"Sleeping Beauty?"

Natasha thought of a man lost in dreamlike--or perhaps nightmarish--forgetfulness, his mind and body as hedged about by controls as a castle had been by thorns, his life forever changed by the prick of a needle...though whether that needle had been the one that had injected his best friend with super-serum or the one that had injected him with the Infinity Formula, she couldn't say. "No," she said softly. "That's someone else."

"So that's everybody but me and Thor," Tony said, sounding pleased.

Bruce shook his head. "I already figured out who you are."

"Who?"

"The full moon of full moons."

"What!"

Bruce favored Tony with a patient glance. "Badroulbadour. The princess from Aladdin. Yes, I know that her name is Jasmine in the Disney movie, but Badroulbadour is her name in the original story. And you have to admit it fits. A rich kid, an only child, growing up somewhat...isolated...thanks to wealth--"

"And with a habit of getting involved with ordinary people right off the street," Steve added, an odd expression crossing his face. On anyone else, it would have been a smirk, but of course it was impossible that Captain America could smirk.

[daria234.livejournal.com]

Any, any/any, Any gets amnesia and feels like he/she has been born again without any clue about the world or the people around

[canonisrelative.livejournal.com]

Battlestar Galactica, Cylon(s) of choice, his/her/their best memories.

[canonisrelative.livejournal.com]

Doctor Who, Tenth Doctor, Remembering what it felt like to be Nine.

[daria234.livejournal.com]

Leverage, team or ot3, Parker decides that she knows what everyone used to be in their past life (bonus if Eliot was something that Parker thinks is cool but most people think would be really undignified, like a gnat or something)

[canonisrelative.livejournal.com]

Star Trek TOS, Khan + crew, When they first land and settle on Ceti Alpha V, it feels like being reborn

Fill - Samsara

[icarus-chained.livejournal.com]

Okay. This turned out more Khan + philosophy/religion than Khan + crew? I hope that doesn't detract. And I'm not really sure I agree with him here, but it seemed like what he'd ascribe to. Heh. "Space Seed" and "Wrath of Khan" both discussed, as well as concepts from a couple of belief systems that I only have shaky knowledge of -_-;

Samsara

And here they say that a person consists of desires,
and as is his desire, so is his will;
and as is his will, so is his deed;
and whatever deed he does, that he will reap.
--- Brihadaranyaka Upanishad


It was said that karma became clear in suffering. That it was the consequence of a man's actions that finally revealed their nature to him, that showed him what he himself had become. The blind, it was said, only realised their own nature when at last they paid its price.

Khan had never believed that. To act, he had thought, was to have vision, to have knowledge. To act at all was to refute blindness and embrace understanding. A man's desire was his will, and his will was his deed. To perform that deed, he first had to know his desires, and to embrace their consequences for him. The power, the will, the vision to act, those were the strength of a man, and his virtue. There could be no consequence to destroy that. There could be no later karma to change a strong man's understanding of his own soul. Such uncertainties were for lesser men, those who had not strength to act at all.

It did not occur to him, then, that the ruins of Ceti Alpha V might be the consequence of the man he had become. That cost was not the cost of his actions, he thought, but of those of the man who had sent them there, who had left his people to die. That ruin was not his price, it was Kirk's, and Kirk was the one who must be made to pay it. For every life, for every moment of suffering, Kirk must be forced to pay. For the ruin of Khan's paradise, where all he had fought for had been meant to come to fruition.

That had been his karma. That paradise, that small, wild empire of will and of deed. It had been like a rebirth, in the beginning. Ceti Alpha V. It had been all that he had dreamed and more. A place of perfect vision, of perfect action, wild and full of consequence. A place to test a man's strength, and show the virtue of it. Far from the corruption of old Earth, from the machinations of lesser beings, Khan's colony was to be the beginning of something new, and the fruition of all that had come before.

Until Kirk had ruined it. Until another man's actions led to its fall.

It had never occurred to him that the fault did not lie with Kirk. Not once, in all his wild quest for vengeance. It hadn't occurred to him that while they had slumbered aboard the SS Botany Bay, his people and he, the cycle had turned on them, a rebirth in truth, and it was the consequences of all they had been that they reaped now in turn. Those who had been weak were now strong, in this new world, and those who had been strong ... now understood, for the first time, their own weaknesses. Reborn two hundred years into the future, the conquered were now the conquerers, and the conquerers now - and perhaps justly - were the conquered.

That was the nature of samsara. By a man's deeds was his nature determined, and by his nature was consequence called upon him. No act of will could turn aside the cycle. No strength of purpose could unmake that consequence before it struck. It was only when a man at last realised his own nature, only when a man was at last moved to change, that the cycle could be broken.

But Khan had never believed that. Khan had never believed himself blind. He had believed, in the end, in something much simpler. A consequence without end, placed upon a man by outside forces, which called from him an endless answering vengeance. On Ceti Alpha V, blind to consequence and to his own nature, he had learned the lie of rebith.

And the truth, ever and always, of hell.


Better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven.
--- Satan, John Milton's Paradise Lost
From hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee.
--- Captain Ahab, Herman Melville's Moby Dick

[jalu2.livejournal.com]

Supernatural, Sam/Dean, soulmates in every reality.

[tigriswolf]

Avengers movieverse, Steve + Bucky, their future in a world where he never remembers who he used to be – he just knows he can’t be Winter Soldier anymore

fill

[likewinning.livejournal.com]

From the ground up – that's how they start again.

Before that, there's days spent exploring all of Brooklyn ("that's where I got beat up," Steve says, "and there, and that's where we used to work before you got too good for the movie theater, and that's where you and your family used to live – the building was shittier back then"). Before that, there are trips to the museum, and the two of them pouring over what video there was back then. Before that, there's Steve telling him story after story about someone Bucky doesn't even recognize. A face and a person he just can't begin to place.

He just doesn't remember. Not any of it.

At first, he thinks about pretending – he has been a lot of people who his handlers wanted him to be. He's played many parts, because he had to. But some small part of him knows that Steve would know he was lying, knows that it would hurt Steve that he felt he had to lie.

"I'm sorry," he says at last. It's been weeks, months, what in some way feels like years. "I'm sorry, it's just – it's gone."

They're on the L train back to where Steve's been staying, out of the Avengers' hair while he tries to get Bucky adjusted. It's late and there's no one else but them in the train car, no sound but the muffled stops being called out every few minutes. Steve is quiet for a while, looking at Bucky, just – looking.

And then: "Okay," Steve says. "Okay, it's – okay."

He reaches out, like he wants to touch Bucky's shoulder, wants to assure him somehow, but he knows Bucky is still cagey about being touched, cagey about – a lot of things.

It took him weeks just to be able to ride the train. Just to deal with the city without thinking about thirty-seven ways to attack someone, if necessary.

"I'm not," Bucky says. He swallows. Clenches his fists. Thinks about the sound of gunshots and the smell of smoke and all the things he doesn't want anymore. "I'm not the guy you used to know. I'm not sure I'll ever be him, Steve. But I – I don't want to be that other guy anymore, either."

There's a trace of a smile on Steve's face, as well as a whole lot of something else. Bucky has wanted to tell him for a while, that Steve's friend, the one he grew up with, the one he would've died for – that guy's gone. "It's okay," Steve says again.

And from there they start again, from the ground up. Bucky gets his own place. He works odd jobs until he finds one he likes. He meets people, and manages not to terrify all of them. He learns the city, learns he hates the train, hates cabs and buses more, learns he'll walk where he has to even if he ends up getting lost and needing to call Steve at six in the morning, ten o'clock at night asking how he gets from one place to another. He learns that he hates spicy food, and diet soda, and most of Queens.

He learns about Steve now, instead of Steve then. And he figures it out – slow at first, and then all in a rush – that even if who Steve used to be doesn't mean anything to him, not in the way it's supposed to – who Steve is to him, now, does.

The memories don't come back, but he builds new ones. Taller ones. Stronger ones. With Steve, and without.

[tigriswolf]

Avengers movieverse, author’s choice, Achilles and Patroclus, Alexander and Hephaestion … Steve and Bucky

[tigriswolf]

Avengers movieverse, Steve/Bucky, Bucky Barnes knew his whole life he’d die falling off a train; he just didn’t see what came after

fill

[pr3tz3ls.livejournal.com]

His Bunică always called it a gift and said it was a rare blessing for a male in their line to inherit it.

James thought of it as a curse because it only told him how he was going to die (a long fall off a train; he never understood the long part. Was the train crossing overa river?). Then it led him to Steve and Bucky figured he could accept the cost for wonders like Stevie.

(He knew, knew, the mission was going to end badly but in the army you don't refuse orders. Besides, he knew he'd live through it. Volunteered to be a lab rat cause he knew that wasn't how his life ended.

As he fell he cursed his gift once more. Steve was reaching for him, had almost grabbed him. Stevie was never going to forgive himself and Bucky wasn't going to be around to tell him otherwise.)

The asset simply thought it was yet another tool its handlers had given it to carry out missions.

The Winter Soldier wasn't sure what it was but he knew the man on the bridge and saved the target instead of finishing the mission.

James 'Bucky' Buchanan Barnes has a talent that is both a gift and a curse but it leads him back to Steve with the promise 'til the end of the line'.

[tigriswolf]

Justified, Raylan + Boyd, the reason they’re so tangled up in each other? Raylan is War and Boyd is Death. (I just finished season 4; no spoilers, please!)

Fill --- In the Cards

[vanillafluffy.livejournal.com]

The Harlan County Fair has sprung from the fields overnight. Whirling rides, flashing lights and colorful booths compete in a cacophany of over-amplified music and hucksters urging fair-goers to "Step right up!"

Amid the crowds, Boyd broods. This year, he is alone; last year, he'd come with Ava. Simple solitude isn't going to dissuade him. There are ample ghosts to keep him company.

Some memories bring an unconscious smile to his lips. He and Johnny playing matador in a pen of Four-H calves, Sneaking into the hoochie-cooch show with Raylan back before either of them was old enough to shave. Less auspicious are recollections of his father: drunk, fighting or angry about losing all his money on the midway, playing games of chance that even a 10-year old knew were for suckers.

Diesel fumes and cotton candy, hot dogs, cheap aftershave and a whiff of manure from the Agriculture pavilion perfumes the night air. "Tell your fortune, mister?" a woman lounging in front of a gaudy tent suggests. "Only twenty dollars."

Well, why not? Not that he actually believes in such foolishness, but it might be amusing. Right now, Boyd is a man in dire need of amusement.

He peels twenty from a roll of greenbacks as he steps into the tent. The interior is festooned with a few strings of white Christmas lights. Two folding chairs face each other across a card table. The woman, his age, with a hairstyle that's straight from the '80's, tucks the bill into her clevage and indicates a chair.

"What would you like to know about?" she asks.

If he had any faith at all in this hocus-pocus, he might ask about Ava's fate, or for advice about how to handle Johnny, or any of a number of nuisances that threaten his interests. But he's not that gullible, and certainly isn't going to confide his business to this Breakfast Club dropout.

He thinks of Raylan--not the boyhood friend who'd been up for any mischief, but the law-and-order version who's forgotten how to have fun, who seems to exist now only to thwart him. "Tell me about my friend," he says to the woman. "Is there any hope of things going back to the way they used to be?"

She has Boyd cut a deck of cards and begins dealing them face-down onto the table in a pattern he can't discern. When she has them arraged to her satisfaction, she begins turning them over, seemingly at random.

"A very old friend indeed," she says, studying the picture. "Since you were boys, yes? You were as one, like brothers. But Cain and Abel were also brothers, and yet one slew the other."

Indeed, Raylan had slain him, and whatever entity, benevolent or malign that had spared him after that shooting had brought him back from cold darkness to do so.

"Your friend...he is quarrelsome, it is his nature. He is like a knight who leads the charge into battle, whatever battle that may be...". The fortune-teller's voice is soft, as if she's reading a bed-time story. "He is a warrior...he is War"

Raylan is War? That would explain a lot, not that he puts any stock in such mumbo-jumbo, but it certainly is the distraction he'd come in here seeking.

"Death has touched you," she continues dreamily. "It's all around you. Friends, loved ones...all corrupted by this darkness. You are Death ..."

"Excuse me?" Boyd says sharply, and the fortune-teller blinks as if she's forgotten he was there. "That's a hell of a think to tell a man!"

She seems bewildered. "I'm sorry, what?"

He doesn't think of himself as a superstitious person, but the shiver that just ran down his back...his mama would've said someone walked over his grave.

"Your friend," the would-be psychic says, as if he'd just asked the question. She peers at the cards in front of her, a little notch appearing between her brows. "You were close then...you're still close. You're two sides of the same coin. You can't have one without the other, but sometimes, you're too much alike and so there's conflict."

"Any suggestions?" he asks, an edge to his voice.

"Light is the answer to darkness," she says simply.

He stands up to leave, and she says, "That will be twenty dollars, please."

Boyd absently fishes twenty out of his pocket for her, and gets the hell out of there. He's away down the raucous midway before he realizes he's been suckered.
.

[tigriswolf]

author's choice, author's choice, every time you dream from someone else's pov, you're seeing a previous life

[rett-chan.livejournal.com]

D.Gray-man/any, any, the Clan of Noah has started to reincarnate once more.

[rett-chan.livejournal.com]

Sherlock, Moriarty, he remembers his past life in the Victorian era

[samueljames]

Leverage, Eliot/Quinn, they always find each other in each new life.

No fill but.....

[lynne-monstr.livejournal.com]

I love this prompt! (There is a sad lack of Eliot/Quinn in my life)

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

Fullmetal Alchemist, Risembool Trio, They were always three, from the beginning to the end of time.

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

The X-Files, Mulder+Scully, Of course Mulder has to research what he found out from the Civil War site (http://www.tv.com/shows/the-xfiles/the-field-where-i-died-568/).

[sasha-b.livejournal.com]

King Arthur (movie or legend), Arthur/Lancelot and or Arthur/Lancelot/Guinevere, didn't we do this before?

[sasha-b.livejournal.com]

The Walking Dead (tv), Shane, choices.

[wolfsong98.livejournal.com]

CSI:Miami, Horatio/Rick, Neither of them realized that the child that they had adopted was Speed reicarnated.

[falkner]

Batman, Bruce +/Jason & Damian, Damian is the reincarnation of Jason, Bruce (optionally the rest of the family too) try to deal with it

(based on the fact that Damian was born around the same time Jason died)

fill

[likewinning.livejournal.com]

Bruce takes it surprisingly well, considering.

He doesn't talk to Damian for three days, but that's not much different from one of their worse fights – before.

He still remembers the smoke in his lungs. Every bruise on his body. But he remembers the other things, too. Talia – his mother training him. Nearly killing him, each birthday.

He remembers, finally, winning the challenge.

He was sent here to kill Bruce. Kill his father.

But.

On the third day, Bruce breaks the silence. Damian's been spending the meantime catching up, familiarizing himself with Wayne Manor. As far as he can tell, not much has changed, but Alfred still jumps a little every time he sees him.

"Do I look like him?" Damian asks him. Alfred's in the kitchen, preparing a large breakfast that they both know Bruce won't eat. He has been polite, and kind, despite the fact that Damian snuck through security three nights ago and nearly killed them both.

He had a change of heart when he saw Bruce. Talia didn't anticipate that was still in him.

But then, he never told his mother who he used to be.

She has her secrets, too.

"Not –" Alfred pauses. The waffles look and smell perfect, and Damian knows, without ever having tried them in this lifetime, that they'll taste that way as well. "Not in your looks. But your eyes…" Alfred pauses. Looks like he'd maybe like something else in his tea besides tea. "Master Bruce may not believe in such things, Master Damian, but I can see you in there."

At the end of the third day, Bruce speaks to him. Damian's been hanging out in the cave, training. He knows Bruce won't want him out there yet. He knows, too, that he won't listen to anything of the kind for very long.

"I've completed all the tests," Bruce tells him. He's not looking Damian in the eyes, which makes Damian think of what Alfred said. He's wearing the suit, but not the cowl, and his expression is more Bruce than Batman.

"And?" Damian asks.

"You're – it's undeniable you're my son. The DNA…"

Damian doesn't roll his eyes, but it's a near thing. His mother would've slapped him for it. "And?" Damian asks.

"I still don't know if…" Bruce's mouth is a thin, thin line.

Damian crosses his arms. Tilts his head. "I have all of his memories. I still remember –"

Dying. He remembers dying. Remembers waiting for Batman to save him, for Bruce.

He's been angry for years. He's still angry. But Bruce looks him in the eye, finally, and maybe he believes it, that Jason Todd's still there right with himself, and maybe he doesn't, but he clears his throat and says, "The others will want to meet you."

"Should I sneak into their bases of operation, too? If your security's laughable, I can't imagine how bad theirs is."

Something twitches on Bruce's face. A smile, almost. His mother never cared for jokes, but he remembers being able to crack through all that stone, years ago.

"I'll – invite them to dinner," Bruce suggests instead.

"I suppose that works, too," Damian says. It is, he supposes, a safer option. If Alfred's cooking can't keep them all in line, nothing can.

[doreyg.livejournal.com]

*POTENTIAL SPOILERS*



MCU, Drax + the other guardians, a new family

[doreyg.livejournal.com]

Avatar Universe, Any Avatar, a friendship so strong that it transcends a single lifetime