girlsfest | Round 1: Quotes

Entry tags:

2023,
quotes

Round 1: Quotes

Each prompt should be centered around words that have already been said.

Possibilities include a quote of any kind:

Existing works (books, poetry, TV shows, movie scripts, video game scripts, song lyrics, articles)
Speech (celebrity, netizen, anonymous)
Anything else that fits!

Example:

Characters/Ship: ITZY Ryujin/Chaeryeong
Tags: alternate universe - fantasy, ryujin is marceline chaeryeong is pb!!
Prompt:

Marceline: I dreamed about you while I was in my poison coma. I was all old and withered, and you were still nice and pink.

Princess Bubblegum: You think I'm nice?

-- Adventure Time 7x12, "Stakes Part 7: Checkmate"

Click here to view the fest rules.

RULES

You are not required to have a Dreamwidth account to participate. There are no signups necessary. You may post anonymously if you want.
There will be 4 rounds of this fest and 1 round will be opened each week of the fest. Rounds will be left open for fills and comments, so there is no deadline for participating.
Prompts do not have to be claimed before you write them, and they can be filled by more than one person.
There is no minimum or maximum word count for fills. In the spirit of the fest, we encourage you to write shorter works!
Users are allowed to crosspost their fic on any other site, such as AO3. However, we ask that when possible, writers post the text of their fills as a reply to the prompt and include a link to an AO3 post if they choose to do so, instead of just linking to an AO3 post in their comment. This helps keep discussion in our community!
Feel free to subscribe and join the comm to keep track of updates and view them on your reading page.

CONTENT
Prompts and fills have to center around K-pop girl group member(s). This includes:

All active and former girl group members
Female soloists
Female members in co-ed groups
Any female idol or trainee affiliated with K-pop (e.g. GP999 contestants, AKB48 members who featured in Produce48)
Slash, gen, het, and trans works are all accepted as long as they involve at least one girl group member

PROMPTING

To prompt, reply to a round post and copy the following template in.

It will look like this when empty:

Characters/Ship:
Tags:
Prompt:

Fill out the form with your prompt. You can also write in "Any" to give the writer freedom to choose their own. For example:

Characters/Ship: Any
Tags: canon compliant, no major character death
Prompt:

Blow all my friendships
To sit in hell with you
But we're the greatest
They'll hang us in the Louvre

- Lorde, The Louvre

FILLING

To post a fill, post a comment reply to the prompt you wrote for and copy the following template in. Title your comment with [FILL] followed by the title of your ficlet.

It will look like this once filled out:

[FILL] still I fall

Characters/Ship: Aespa Winter/Karina
Tags: idolverse, predebut, shared trauma
Permission to Remix: Please ask
-

Content of fill here...

Please provide content warnings for Graphic Depictions of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, and Underage as well as NSFW/explicit content.

REMIXES

You are welcome to remix fics that the original author has approved for remixing. A remix is a work directly or indirectly inspired by another work.

To post a remix, post a comment reply to the comment you remixed and copy the following template in with your info. Title your comment with [REMIX] followed by the title of your remix.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Characters/Ship: WJSN Exy/Bona
Tags: heroes!au, resentment, mixed feelings, angst
Permission to Remix: Yes

++ ao3 link

-

It’s four in the morning when suspicious noises start coming from the hallway.

Sojung—previously passed-out on the couch after a morning of filling mission reports, an afternoon of training new recruits and a night of drinking wine with Dawon and Yeonjung—reaches out for the bow and arrow she left over the coffee table and stands behind the door, ready to attack in case the noise means trouble.

The noise becomes louder, a mix of metal and leather sounds echoing through the walls, and when the disruptor of Sojung’s peace attempts to unlock the door to her apartment, she wastes no time before she a few cautious steps back, bracing herself to shoot an arrow straight into the fucker’s forehead when—

“Jiyeon,” Sojung breathes out, shoulders slumping as the fight leaves her body and she finally feels safe enough to put the bow down, scanning the hallway before she makes room for Jiyeon to step inside. “What the fuck.”

Jiyeon raises her hands up to the air, an unnerving smirk dancing on her busted, bloody lips. Sojung doesn’t even want to wonder what Jiyeon got herself into to be looking like that. “I usually love to be threatened by a hot girl, but given our history I think I deserve at least a hello first.”

Sojung crosses her arms over her chest as she watches Jiyeon make herself comfortable on the couch, arms and legs sprawled as if she owned the place. Sojung scoffs, annoyed and tired and something else she’s not ready to admit to herself yet, then blurts out, “What are you doing here?”

Jiyeon throws an arm over her face, grunts when she accidentally hits her elbow against the back of the couch. “Visiting.”

“Cut the bullshit, Jiyeon,” Sojung presses. “What are you really doing here?”

Jiyeon pushes herself up into a sitting position, wincing as she does so, then removes her jacket and lifts her shirt up. Sojung gasps once she sees the bruises scattered all over Jiyeon’s stomach, some lighter ones fading near her ribs. There’s blood dripping from her left shoulder, too, and the sight is enough to make Sojung sick.

Jiyeon tilts her head to the side as she watches Sojung watch her, then has the nerve to grin like a devil before she says, “There’s your answer.”

Part of Sojung wants to kick Jiyeon out. The other part, soft and somehow unscathed by their fallout, that still holds onto the memories of spending an entire week hiding in the tunnels of a train station in Russia with a desperate Jiyeon by her side, helping her escape the clutches of the Red Room in the middle of the coldest winter she’s ever known and building a team of misfits-turned-heroes from scratch with her, makes it impossible for her to.

Sojung puts her hands on her waist as she takes one more look at Jiyeon’s worn out figure, shakes her head in disbelief because she can’t believe she’s actually going to help her after everything that went down between them, and stomps towards her bathroom to grab her first-aid kit.

When Sojung returns, she leaves the kit over the table and kneels in front of Jiyeon, not bothering to be polite before she addresses the elephant in the room. “Your face is everywhere,” she starts, throwing alcohol into the small piece of cotton in her hands. She dabs it over Jiyeon’s injured shoulder, feels like a fool when her heart aches at the sight of Jiyeon turning her face to the side, closing her eyes and flinching in pain. “You’re the most wanted woman in the country. Why would you risk getting caught like this?”

Jiyeon’s focus returns to Sojung’s face, and if Sojung didn’t know her as well as she does, she’d miss the longing that flashed inside her eyes for a split second before Jiyeon shaped them back into their usual sharp, overly-confident selves again. “The government is too stupid to catch me.”

The smugness in Jiyeon’s voice makes something poisonous bloom inside Sojung’s throat, and before she can choose her words wisely, she’s spitting out, “What makes you think I won’t turn you in?”

Jiyeon freezes for a moment, as if the possibility hadn’t even crossed her mind. Always so full of herself, Sojung thinks bitterly, because that’s one of the many things she used to love about Jiyeon, but now—well, she’s not so sure anymore.

Jiyeon composes herself once Sojung finishes patching her shoulder and prepares to cater to the wounds on her stomach instead. “First of all, you’re taking care of me,” Jiyeon raises an eyebrow, using her chin to point to the cream Sojung is holding. Sojung’s only answer to that is a scowl. “Second, you wouldn’t,” she says tentatively, gingerly. “The same way I wouldn’t, if it were you instead of me.”

Sojung puts the cream down, a heavy sigh escaping lips. She regrets the words she’s about to say as they sit at the tip of her tongue, before they even have the opportunity to make themselves known, but she knows she needs to say them anyway. Something is telling her she might explode if she keeps them in any longer. “Why don’t you come back?”

Jiyeon sinks her teeth into her lower lip, avoids Sojung’s gaze at all costs. “You know why.”

Sojung feels it all come back—the pain, the anger, the betrayal—as if an entire year hasn’t passed, as if they didn’t have this exact same talk the other three times they happened to stumble across each other since Jiyeon left the team, as if she didn’t tell everyone she knows she didn’t give a fuck about Kim Jiyeon anymore.

(A blatant lie, a poisonous one that always left a bad taste on her tongue whenever her chest hurt enough for her to be able to spill it out.)

The other three times were mere accidents, though. Jiyeon actively looked for her this time—because she needed help and if she showed her face in any other part of the town she’d end up behind bars or worse, of course, but how is Sojung supposed not to hope, not to wonder if, maybe, things can go back to the way they once were?

Sojung’s hands tremble when she touches Jiyeon’s stomach, takes a deep breath to keep herself from falling apart as flashbacks to the last time she was this close to Jiyeon start to flood her brain—a mission gone wrong, deafening screams, hot tears, and a silent request to spend the night at Jiyeon’s bedroom instead of her own that turned into open-mouthed kisses, shameless touches and sighs of pleasure.

(“Hey, hey,” Jiyeon told her, using the soft tone she saved for when Sojung was breaking down and needed all the reassurance she could get, holding her face between her hands. “Are you sure about this?”

“Yes,” Sojung panted with her eyes closed, her grip on Jiyeon’s sweater becoming impossibly tighter. “Please. I need—,” Sojung swallowed the you that almost jumped out of her throat. “Please.”)

Sojung still finds it hard to wrap her head around the fact that one of the worst nights of her life turned into the one where she felt the most alive, the most wanted, the most human, all because of Jiyeon. Nothing she’s experienced ever since managed to come close.

“No, I don’t know why!” Sojung barks through the knot forming inside her throat, threatening to choke her to death. “Because you fucked up one mission? Really? Do you know how many missions I fucked up—”

“I’m not you!” Jiyeon screams back, then runs a hand through her hair to ground herself, taking a deep breath before she feels composed enough to continue. “There were multiple casualties, Juyeon got shot twice, Yeonjung spent an entire month in the medbay, and you—“ Jiyeon chokes, faces the ceiling for a second, and Sojung has to fight the urge to wipe the lone tear that falls through Jiyeon’s cheek. “You almost died. In my arms. Because of me. Because I was careless.” Then, barely above a whisper, she finishes, “I don’t know how to build myself back up the way you do.”

“You could learn,” Sojung suggests, doing a terrible job at not sounding as eager as she feels. “The people need you.”

That seems to trigger something in Jiyeon, because her face turns sour as she looks Sojung dead in the eyes before she blurts out, “God, Sojung. I was never in it for the people or for all that hero crap, I was in it for yo—“ Jiyeon bites her tongue, screws her eyes shut and forces her tone into something calmer, colder, distant. “For the team.”

(“Gather, everyone!” Jiyeon screamed, placed her camera on the table and rushed to the couch, stumbling over someone else’s slippers and falling straight into Sojung’s lap. She smirked, making herself comfortable instead of taking the empty space beside her. “Hello, there.”

“Hi,” Sojung laughed, all mushy and giddy and overcome with fondness, wrapped her hands around Jiyeon’s waist and rested her chin over her shoulder. “Come on, guys, the time is ticking—Yeonjung, for the love of God, stop slapping Dayoung—hurry up!”

The picture ended up being a mess—it was blurry, most of them weren’t actually staring at the camera, and Hyunjung’s hand was covering the entirety of Soobin’s face. Sojung loved it, anyway, refused to let Jiyeon throw it away.)

Sojung is about to make a fool of herself again by saying come back for the team, then—we could make it work, they miss you, I miss you, but Jiyeon’s expression remains the same, the harshness haunting her eyes being enough to send a chill down Sojung’s spine, so she decides against it. Instead, she grabs Jiyeon’s chin and starts dabbing the medicine on her lips, licking her own in the process because, oh, how she misses their taste. She hasn’t stopped longing for the feel of Jiyeon’s mouth against hers ever since that fateful night, not for a second, despite everything.

“You’re staring,” Jiyeon comments to break the suffocating silence that fell between them, blinking innocently when Sojung stops the ministrations on her lips to glare at her.

“Of course I am,” Sojung defends herself, voice an octave higher than usual, and curses herself when her cheeks start to heat up. “Am I supposed to fix your mess with my eyes closed?”

Jiyeon laughs, eyes curling up into those crescents that used to send Sojung’s heart into a frenzy back in the day. The sound, so gentle yet so distressing to hear now, sends a thousand bullets flying through Sojung’s chest, drowns her insides in a sea of blood. “You never asked me what happened.”

“And I won’t,” Sojung huffs. “It’s better that way.”

Jiyeon nods, folding her arms behind her head. “That’s fair.”

The silence is bearable this time, no sharp thorns hanging in the air and threatening to cut Sojung in half. It’s still hard for Sojung to breathe normally, though, because Jiyeon’s muscles became more toned and defined in the five months they haven’t seen each other and she’s only human, after all—Jiyeon is and always will be a sight for sore eyes, battered and bruised or not.

(A complete asshole that left Sojung to pick up the pieces of a shattered team behind or not.)

Sojung doesn’t know what to do with it, with all those mixed feelings she has for Jiyeon battling against each other inside her—feelings that tear her stomach apart, spread a fire between her bones and make her burn, burn, burn, until pitiful ashes are all that remain. Hasn’t been able to figure out a way to shut them off for good, even after all this time, even after all the tears she shed over the woman sitting in front of her, looking every bit like a goddess and a devil under the precarious lightning of her apartment.

At this point, she thinks she never will.

And Jiyeon, devastatingly and unexpectedly as usual, startles Sojung by placing her hand over the one Sojung has pressed against the wound on her cheek that she had just finished tending to, lips curling up into the saddest smile Sojung’s ever seen on her beautiful face before she says, honest and vulnerable for a change, “Thank you, Sojung.”

Sojung, against her better judgment, allows herself to be vulnerable, too. It feels like the most unforgivable of sins to attempt to ruin a moment this fragile, this rare, although she knows she’ll regret it later, when her head is resting over a damp pillow as she replays the events of this early morning a million times in her head, unable to fall asleep.

Although she knows it tastes an awful lot like a goodbye—not a see you soon, not a I’ll see you around. It tastes like the official end of Hawkeye and Black Widow, the fiercest combination Korea has ever known, the protectors of Seoul, the kindred spirits.

It’s a real goodbye, this time. One Sojung can’t stop from happening, no matter what she says, no matter what she does.

She leans into Jiyeon’s touch, basking in the warmth she exudes, and whispers, “For what?”

Jiyeon presses her lips against Sojung’s palm, and Sojung has to sink her teeth into the insides of her cheek until she feels blood on her tongue in order to not burst out crying.

Jiyeon, even though there are waterfalls sliding down her face now, swallows her pride to face Sojung as she answers, “For everything.”

Characters/Ship: wjsn exy/bona
Tags: prequel
Permission to Remix: Yes

-

This was a bad idea.

Jiyeon knows it as soon as their eyes meet, a split second of recognition in between the stray gunshots and Sojung spinning to notch an arrow to point at her through the doorway. They're in some abandoned building, halfway across the globe from the home Jiyeon can't go back to, but she had thought—foolishly—maybe she could pretend, if she just got to talk to Sojung one more time.

It's not exactly easy to pretend, though, when the first thing Sojung does is scream at her with all the fervor she reserves for the worst people on the planet, "What the fuck are you doing here?"

"Hey—" Jiyeon protests, jilted. "Easy. I could ask you the same thing."

Sojung doesn't move, face guarded. "That's classified information."

"Fine. Keep your secrets," Jiyeon says. Better to pretend that this is a coincidence, just a chance encounter, and not Jiyeon ripping her heart out for Sojung to see, if she bothered to understand.

Jiyeon keeps her voice light, mouth quirking in Sojung's direction in the hopes that it'll make her soften, lower that goddamn arrow. "You know, I never realized how sexy it would be to be on the other side," she says, gesturing between the two of them—or more accurately, her and Sojung's bow.

It's the wrong move. Some part of Jiyeon knew that, knew better, but it still stings to see that the reaction she gets isn't Sojung flushing with embarrassment, but rather with unmistakable anger.

"You think I'm not serious? I'll do it," Sojung grits out.

Sojung—she wouldn't. Or, Jiyeon's Sojung wouldn't. Jiyeon supposes she should have known that they aren't each other's anymore. They both did their part to make sure of that.

"Sojung," Jiyeon says, pleading. "It's me."

Sojung's eyes only harden. "Please," Jiyeon whispers, as a last resort.

"I don't have time for this," Sojung grunts, and in the blink of an eye she lets the arrow loose. Jiyeon doesn't have time to react—and luckily she doesn't, because it slices right past her, right over her shoulder.

"What the fuck?" Jiyeon says, stomping towards Sojung. But up close, the urge to shake her drains from her body. She stops short, frozen—paralyzed. The only thing she finds in Sojung's eyes is unfamiliar disdain.

Jiyeon never would have thought that seeing Sojung would carve her open, every time. But just her presence dredges up memories she can't forget: Sojung lying lifeless in the rubble of their city, in her arms; "She's not going to make it," in Dawon's voice, tinged with smoke and gunfire; the way everything went dull around Jiyeon, drowned out by her refusal to accept a world without Sojung as reality. In Sojung's final moments, Jiyeon hadn't stayed by her side, didn't hold her hand as death came to take her. In the white-hot center of her fury, all she knew was that she would destroy the world to avenge Sojung. She couldn't think. It didn't matter how many direct orders to stand down she would have to disobey, how much more danger she would have to put her team in.

The guilt never went away, even after seeing Sojung whole and healthy again. Especially after seeing her whole and healthy again. Jiyeon knew with a sinking certainty: you couldn't build a life on miracles, and she'd rather have Sojung hate her guts than dead. In the end, it wasn't a hard choice to make. It was the only one she could.

"You should leave." Sojung turns away from her, arms crossed. "You're not supposed to be here."

"What if I don't want to go?" Jiyeon says, bristling. Then, remembering she probably shouldn't fight fire with fire, "You can't blame me for wanting to talk to you."

"Unless you're planning on begging me to take you back, I don't see what else we have to talk about," Sojung says, sharp-edged. Brutal. Jiyeon didn't think she had it in her.

Sojung glances at back her. Laughs, sardonically, soft and bitter. "Yeah, I didn't think so."

That's just unfair. Jiyeon's heart burns, aches for a life that isn't hers anymore. "I saw what you said," is what spills out, a slice of hurt seeping through despite Jiyeon's best efforts. She did more than just see Black Widow's condemnment on the news, like everyone else—the hollow tone of Sojung saying to the press, "We want nothing to do with her. She's made her choice," has been burned into her mind for months.

"You used to defend me to all those stupid reporters. What happened?"

Jiyeon watches Sojung's throat move as she swallows, unsettled. "What do you want me do to, Jiyeon? Am I supposed to defend the most disgraced hero in the country?"

"I'm not—" Maybe it's the case that she's embraced that that's who she is, but it stings hearing it from Sojung. She could be a villain to everyone in the world, and it wouldn't matter, as long as Sojung saw her for who she really was.

Jiyeon's voice shakes. She's not sure why she ever thought she'd be ready to face this. "I'm just me."

"That's the problem."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I don't know, Jiyeon! You're the one who left us," Sojung says. "Left me."

"You're the one who told me to leave."

It's punctuated by another gunshot that lodges itself in the wall, just beside Sojung's head.

"Who the fuck—" Jiyeon's instincts take over. She storms towards the window, shielding herself behind the wall, gun in hand.

When she glances out the cracked windowpane to survey the scene, she spots the fucker on top of the parking complex across from them. Idiot. They try a few more badly aimed shots before Jiyeon loses her patience and puts a bullet in their head. She waits a few seconds, until the silence settles, unpleasant and looming.

When Jiyeon looks back at Sojung, she isn't brimming with the anger she was before, isn't seething at Jiyeon for acting recklessly like she expected. She's slumped against the wall, eyes closed. Defeated. Jiyeon doesn't think she's ever seen her like this.

She remembers Sojung pulling her aside, when she was still hiding her limp, still insisting she was fine. Her grave voice, saying, "That can't happen again," as if Jiyeon could just—not lose her mind the next time she thought Sojung was dead, no fucking problem.

The words were an echo of all the poorly disguised rehabilitation meetings Jiyeon sat through in the aftermath, irritatingly so, and Jiyeon couldn't help but snap back, bitterly, "You too?" She wanted to scream, I thought you were gone. I thought I lost you. There was no coming back from that.

Jiyeon didn't say any of it. Couldn't. She swallowed it down, and of course—selfless, stupidly honorable Sojung, who always put her job above all other, she said, "I need you to take this seriously. You know we can't afford mistakes like that. You and me, we can't—" Sojung broke off, but Jiyeon could hear it ringing clearly in her ears, that whatever she felt for Sojung that pushed her to break all of Sojung's careful rules was one-sided. Would Sojung let her bleed out on the battlefield, if it meant the bad guys would be put behind bars, in the end?

And then, Sojung lowered her voice, as if to twist the knife deeper, "If you can't handle it, then—"

"Then what?" Jiyeon cut in.

"Then you have the same option as everyone else. You don't have to stay."

Jiyeon couldn't believe it. Couldn't stand it. She walked away without another word, before she did something worse, like explode on Sojung right there in the hallway. She couldn't believe this was the same person who held Jiyeon's heart in her hands, the same person who, on that night she had spent in Jiyeon's bed, she had whispered to, "Thank you," and meant it, for everything she couldn't articulate yet. And when Sojung whispered back, "For what?" Jiyeon pressed her hand into Sojung's. Said, "For giving me this. A place I want to stay." She had meant their team, but she had also meant Sojung.

And there Sojung was, shattering it all—all their history and all the implications from that night they hadn't confronted yet—with her stupid devotion to protocol. More than even the festering guilt from all the avoidable damage she had inflicted on her team—her family, that's what fucked Jiyeon up the most. Sojung telling her they didn't need her. Telling her to leave.

That was it, then: a few weeks later, she did.

Jiyeon should have known, really. When she finally found somewhere she belonged, she couldn't keep it. That's just who she was. She couldn't trust herself not to ruin it. In the aftermath, she had convinced herself that even Sojung didn't trust her not to ruin it.

"What I said that day— I never meant it," Sojung says, finally, looking back at her. Her voice breaks. "Can't you see? I can't do this without you, Jiyeon."

"You can," Jiyeon says. "You have to."

Sojung exhales, hard and long. "You don't give me much choice."

Jiyeon can see all the signs of Sojung about to fall apart. But—"You should go," Sojung says, voice watery. What Jiyeon should do is comfort her, make sure she doesn't break down in the middle of her mission.

But she doesn't. She does what Sojung asks of her, leaves knowing that for all her hopes that Sojung would be better off without her, she still somehow managed to find a way to make things worse.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Round 1: Quotes

[FILL] sorry about the blood in your mouth

[REMIX] all you had to do was stay (the hearts with teeth remix)