rthstewart | Three Sentence Ficathon 2022

This post is NOW CLOSED TO NEW PROMPTS! PLEASE POST YOUR NEW PROMPTS HERE, IN POST 2! Do continue to fill prompts here but please put all new prompts in Post 2.

Welcome to the Three Sentence Ficathon!

Here's a Friending meme!

What is the 3 Sentence Ficathon?
This is an open exchange where you answer a prompt with a fic consisting of only three sentences. It's open to all fandoms and you can post and fill as many prompts as you like, as many times as you want.

What do I do first?
You can start 3SF by posting prompts! When posting a prompt please format it this way:

fandom, character(s), prompt word/sentence.

Only one prompt per comment please. So, for example,

Star Wars, Obi-Wan Kenobi, I don't like sand."

Open ended and anthropomorphic fills are popular too, such as:

Any, Any, "I don't like sand."

or

Earth geography, sand, "I don't like humans very much, either."

What happens after that?
You answer other posters' prompts in three sentences (or more if you can't stop yourself) and fill as many prompts as you want, as many times as you wish. If you see that a prompt you loved has already been filled, go ahead and fill it again! Multiple fills of the same prompt are allowed and even encouraged! (We get really fun stories going this way).

Can I still post if I need more than 3 sentences? Or should I just abuse grammar in ways the English language never contemplated?
Yes. Yes.

But I'm not a member of Dreamwidth
No problem. You can comment anonymously or through open ID

I'm really overwhelmed by all the prompts and how much there is and how fast it goes. I can't read 1,000 prompts and fills. It's too much.
I hear this a lot and it keeps a lot of people from participating. The 3SF is big and it moves fast, especially at first. I get overwhelmed, too, and I'm hosting the thing. With 2020 and 2021 sucking so badly you don't want something that's supposed to be fun cause you anxiety. I have a couple of suggestions for managing the 3SF volume.

First, really, you don't have to read every prompt and fill on every page. You can start at the last page of this and just go forward, or back a page or two. It's fine.
You can come and go as time and energy allow, you don't have to participate the whole time, and it drops off quite at bit after about 2 weeks and especially once we open a new post because this one is approaching 4,500 comments.
Even after the 3SF and new prompting end, people fill prompts all year long.
You can fill an already filled prompt and you can can leave a prompt that's already been prompted before. People do it all the time.

Always make sure you're looking at top-level comments only, not threaded. That helps a lot. Your screen should look like this.

But shouldn't I read everything to see if someone already prompted the same prompt I want to leave if someone already filled it?
No. Prompt as many times as you want, as much as you want. It doesn't matter if someone prompted the exact same prompt. Go ahead and prompt again!

I left a prompt and no one filled it. Can I prompt it again?
Absolutely!

Can I spread the word?
Yes, please. I generally fail at creating banners and embed codes but if you create one and make it really idiot-proof, I might be able to post and share it. Feel free to cross-post this entry. If you create your own banners or icons, let me know and I'll share!
Please share the 3SF with your followers, friends, and any channels and comms you are active on. I'll post on fandom calendar, Tumblr, and Twitter, but I don't have many connections in other spaces such as Discord.

Here's my attempt at a text box that might go horribly awry.

How long will it go?
The 3SF closes to new prompts on February 13, 2022. The entry stays open permanently and people post fills all year long. (There were a bunch of new posts to the 2021 3SF this week!)

Are there any rules about cross-posting?
Nope, you can post wherever you want, whenever you want. A lot of folks collected their responses together and posted them on AO3 under the 3 sentence fiction tag. 3SFs are a terrific prompt for remixes and could be helpful for Yuletide bears, too.

What about spoilers, content and archive warnings, triggers, pairings, ratings, tags, and squick?

I thought a lot about this. It boils down to reader beware. In my experience, this typically gets too big, moves too fast, and the stories are too short for content warnings and ratings to even apply. It is too big for me to moderate in this way. You should assume spoilers are fair game and that the initial poster and the responder have opted to use no content warnings or tags. This means AO3 content warnings for dubcon, violence, canon character death, underage, etc. COULD be present (and much more). I've found personally that I can skim and scroll by stuff that, from the prompt, I can tell isn't my favorite flavor of delicious cake. Use your best judgment, protect yourself, and be prepared to skip over things that aren't your thing. In this format, the obligation is on you, the reader, to protect yourself from triggering content.
Some posters do include warnings and spoiler tags or include spoiler space, but they don't have to do so.

Why is 3SF split among several posts? That seems confusing.
It is confusing and we always lose momentum once we have to move to a second post. The reason is because at 5,000 comments to a single post, DW installs a human test CAPTCHA, which is a pain for users. So, once this entry gets to the upper 4,000 comments, I open a new post. If you've been waiting until things slow down to participate, when we open a second post is often a good place to join.

If I have questions, what do I do?
I'm rthstewart everywhere, here, Twitter, Tumblr, gmail and AO3.

A special thank you to

conuly .
Last year, Conuly started logging all unfilled prompts.
This year's (2021) unfilled prompts are here.
Last year's (2020) unfilled prompts are here.

Conuly asks that you not reply, as they want to be able to edit and add more prompts to the list.

Here, have some icons and banners and let me know if you've created your own!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Bucky staggers into the shelter, and as Clint takes in the look of him, it isn’t good. His skin is grey, pain etched deep into a frown as he whispers, “Help me!” collapsing to his knees in front of Clint. Clint barely has enough time to catch enough of him to stop his body hitting the ground with a smack that wouldn’t do his injuries any good whatsoever.

He helps him lie down, slipping a jacket under his head, trying to make him as comfortable as possible in the cramped space, hurrying as he does so, so he can start looking for where Bucky’s hurt.

“Get it off!” Bucky pleads urgently. It’s Clint’s turn to frown, unsure what Bucky means, but he starts by unzipping his jacket and working his way down Bucky’s torso, so he can look and feel for the injury. He’s not finding it quick enough, as he begins to check his legs, but the sweat on Bucky’s brow, the quiet plea for him to ‘get it off’ that seems to be taking all of Bucky’s willpower to express is all the proof he needs that this is real. Bucky is injured and in pain and it breaks his heart, just as it steels his commitment to fixing this, and that is when he sees it, sees as Bucky tenses further as if a wave of pain is flowing through him as he gently reaches up to stroke Bucky’s hair back in comfort he feels the sharp tingle of electricity surging through and then it’s gone again. It’s the arm, “Get it off” is what Bucky had said, he’d meant the arm.

“I’m sorry, Bucky,” he says quietly as he runs his fingers across the shoulder joint, where the arm fixes into the plate on his shoulder. He can feel it now a constant running electrical charge pulsing painfully against his own skin. He remembers the night Bucky had trusted him enough to tell him about the release and how Ayo had suddenly activated it mid fight when he’d been with Sam. He’d promised then never to go near it.

He looks again at Bucky’s face, sees the taut signs of pain, the lip he’s biting, the glazed unfocused eyes and knows he has to do this. If he doesn’t Bucky is going to lose this fight. He leans in close, takes Bucky’s face in his hands and says, “I’m going to take the arm off now, Bucky. I hope that’s what you were asking and I pray this is going to help but please believe me, I’m doing it to help.”

Clint hopes he isn’t breaking Bucky’s trust, as he moves his hands back to the arm and activates the release. The arm just drops away with a solid thunk to the ground below it. He looks back at Bucky’s face again, hoping that he’ll see some relief to the pain there, but Bucky doesn’t look any better, he’s still biting his lip to keep from crying out in pain, releasing the arm hasn’t done anything to help. Bucky barely looks conscious now, his breathing laboured. Carefully, Clint climbs over Bucky’s body, squeezing in on his other side so that he can see directly into the mechanism that’s still fixed to his body and there he can see the mess that’s left – Clint has no idea what any one part of it is, but it’s clear the wires and chips are burnt out, what he assumes is either a power pack or a major processor of some sort is in the centre, still sparking. That’s what he needs to remove and he has absolutely nothing to do it with. The last thing he needs to do is put a knife in there and end up electrocuting himself as well or accidentally joining a currently severed circuit and upping the power coursing through Bucky’s body.

Then he remembers, he crawls back across Bucky, grabs at his quiver and hunts through the arrows that are left. There it is, the one he can use – wooden shaft and ceramic tip. As soon as he starts to move the unit in Bucky’s arm, the sparks get worse, Bucky’s gasping for breath – short and sharp, his pulse frighteningly fast. Tears in his eyes, Clint forces the ceramic tip deeper beneath the unit and twists, flipping it free, Bucky’s body tenses and then relaxes, slipping into unconsciousness, but his breathing is easier and when Clint feels for his pulse again, it’s slowing, steadying already. He turns his attention back to the shoulder, there are no more sparks which is a relief, but some of the wires are still red with heat from the charge, he uses the ceramic tip to sever them, no longer caring about any damage he might cause, he just wants to get anything that might still be causing Bucky pain away.

When he’s finished, he bandages the open unit, covers it to protect any further contamination – he doesn’t know what might happen, whether Bucky can catch an infection but in some way that Clint doesn’t fully understand this is connected into his body, to his brain. Clint isn’t going to risk anything if a bandage or a bit more care might make a difference.

When he’s done all he can, he climbs out of the cramped position he’d been in. He calls in for help, checks Bucky again, his breathing is calm, more like sleep now and his pulse is steady, the sweat from his brow has gone and his features are relaxed. Clint thinks the colour is beginning to return to his skin, but maybe that’s just wishful thinking at this stage.

He settles beside Bucky to wait, he’s done all he can and now he just needs to wait for them to be picked up. He’s repacked their gear, stored the arm ready to be lifted out as well and now he’s just watching over Bucky and waiting.

Three Sentence Ficathon 2022

Marvel MCU (post Falcon and the Winter Soldier), Bucky & Clint