Prompt Challenge 6: Rise Up, Rising

[senmut]

Welcome to the sixth prompt for Half a Moon 2020!

Today's prompts are:

Rise Up

and

Rising

No prompts are required, they're just here to provide the challenge if you need one. You can post your works as a response to this post or separately to the community, just remember to tag your works appropriately.

Please remember any works using a canon female character are welcome: graphics, gifsets, meta, links, fics, graphics, art, and recs.

Day One | Day Two | Day Three | Day Four | Day Five

2020 Welcome Post | FAQ | 2020 Prompts - full list

Comments

Victor/Victoria, Victoria Grant

[senmut]

Pushing back on gangsters was one thing, Victoria had decided.

Actually making the happiness she thought it would bring was quite the other.

Now, though, she was certain she had the right elements to make it all work.

King would remain in Chicago, and they would be unofficially separated, but a second divorce was not what she wanted. Nor did he, for all that he did not know how to support her dreams. They would have holidays here and there, away from either of their lives, but that would be the extent of married life.

Nor did she expect him to be faithful to an empty marriage bed. She might or might not have itches to scratch as time went by, with her more European view of affairs. She'd just manage them discreetly, to keep her venture from sinking under the scandals.

An empty theater would be her venue. Many telegrams with Andre later, and she was fairly certain she knew just what she was getting into. She did not wish to compete with the art styles of Harlem, and thus had set her sights on Atlantic City. It was very much gangster territory still, and King knew who to pay off, who to flatter, and who to muscle.

Talent would come from all over, and she wooed names that appeared in the smaller clubs, offering shares of profit in lieu of wages for their trial periods.

Last of all, she sent a telegram to Toddy. She missed him, missed his advice, his company, his unique views on the world.

Victoria Grant, once the toast of Paris as Victor Grazinski, was on the move, rising above the plain life that fettered her one too many times. Once Toddy was here, it would be perfect, and she would blaze new trails.

Activation - The Godfather Saga - Connie & Carmela Corleone

[cmk418]

Title: Activation
Fandom: The Godfather Saga
Characters: Connie Corleone, Carmela Corleone
Rating: G
Word Count: 236
Summary: Making a loaf of bread becomes a life lesson



All her young life, Connie had been instructed on her place- stay quiet, be a good girl, keep her virtue and when she was old enough meet a nice Italian boy, settle down, and have kids. It wasn’t like with her brothers who were ushered into secret rooms and taught the family business.

She whined about it to her mother one day when they were in the kitchen making bread. “I wish I was a boy.”

Her mother sighed. “Come here. You know what happens when you don’t add yeast to this mixture?”

Connie shook her head.

“Your bread stays flat. It goes nowhere. These little tiny bits of yeast feed off the dough and help it to rise, but the circumstances need to be right, the time needs to be right. You add a little sugar to the mix to help it along and you get yourself a nice loaf of bread. Stay in the background, listen to what’s said and don’t comment, at least not right away, then you wait and when it’s the right time, you set things into motion in your own quiet way. The men talk a good game, but there’s no rising to the top without us. Remember that.”

Years later, when her father and two of her brothers were gone and Michael was threatening to make the family legitimate, Connie realized that it was finally her time to act.