purereflectionsworld

[purereflectionsworld]

WIP Wednesday (belated)

Thank you so much for tagging me, @sparkleplatypuswriter ! So very excited about the Aleida chapter of your Brazil fic ❤️ - WIP linked here! I think a lot of lovely FAM writers have been tagged already but maybe not @caffeinatedcrab and @flamingo24 ?

So after I re-watched the sweet scene in the “Leningrad” episode of For All Mankind where Margo is laser focused on trying to catch a good glimpse of Aleida on the video feed, clearly missing her desperately, my brain cooked up a little scene set partway through “Legacy.” The premise is that Margo is trying to respect Aleida’s desire for her to stay clear of her personal life, but she can’t help it when an opportunity to snoop just a little bit falls into her lap. Here is a snippet from that scene. It may very well show up in an epilogue/flash forward in my current Margo-Aleida fic (link here) or somewhere else.

*

You don’t get to ask me about my family or my son again. Understand?

It takes a day for Margo to recover from those words. What’s most painful to her is the way Aleida delivered them, with such quiet conviction. It would have been easier, somehow, had she yelled.

By the second day, the resignation has settled in. She’s going to respect Aleida’s request not to pry into her family life. She owes her that, at least. Aleida won’t have to worry about her fishing for details from her ex-colleagues, either. No one at NASA will even talk to Margo, except Eli Hobson. And  she’s noticed that Hobson gets skittish if she ever so much as brings up Aleida in conversation. It’s clear that he’s aware of their tension.

But still, she wonders.

Aleida’s vivid description of the post-bombing aftermath - back in that Leningrad hotel room - had glaringly left out any indication of how Aleida’s own personal life had evolved since that day. Margo is now certain that this omission was entirely intentional.

Of course, Margo remembers that Aleida had been separated from Victor at the time of the bombing. She has spent more time than she’d ever admit carefully studying the ring Aleida currently wears on her left hand, and she’s 95% sure it’s the same one she was wearing in 1995. But there are only so many ways a low-profile gold wedding band can look, and the 5% sliver of doubt eats at her. Of course, it shouldn’t matter who Aleida is with now, as long as she is happy, and co-parenting Javi with a reasonable degree of success. But when she recalls the look on Victor’s face when they’d spoke of Aleida, that night she’d first met him in the JSC lobby and he’d feared their relationship might be over - and the look on his face at their wedding, watching Aleida walk down the aisle toward him - she feels strangely unsettled. 

On the second day of asteroid capture mission discussions at NASA’s office, seating arrangements have become rather less formal. Aleida arrives just in time for the meeting, and the only seat left is directly next to Margo. She slips into the chair but doesn’t look at Margo once for the entire first hour. 

Hobson calls a five minute break, and Aleida excuses herself to the restroom. Margo stays in her seat chatting with Hobson, who’s on Aleida’s other side. As Hobson drones on and on, she sees a sudden flash of light, and realizes that Aleida’s cell phone - sitting face up on top of her notes - has lit up with a text message. When she glances down and sees the sender’s name in capital letters - VIC - she can’t resist. She’s desperate to see whether it’s the going to the grocery store before I come home tonight, do you need anything type of message, or the going on a work trip in two weeks, know it’s not your scheduled week but can you take Javi type of message. 

It turns out to be a different type of message entirely. *

#for all mankind #margo x aleida #margo madison #aleida rosales

[purereflectionsworld]

Something that really moved me on a rewatch of Leningrad (4x06) - the scene where Margo is watching the video feed and instead of surveying the scene to gather political intelligence for Roscosmos, she’s frantically switching camera angles and zooming in to get the perfect close-up shot of Aleida’s face 😭 😭 😭 Like she misses her SO much 💔 I can just imagine her later in 4x08, hurting, trying to respect Aleida’s “you don’t get to ask about my family” comment but trying to analyze whether Aleida’s wedding band is the same one she wore in 1995 or just looks similar. And wishing she could ask Hobson (the only person at NASA who will talk to her) about Aleida’s family life, but Hobson won’t touch that conversation with a 10-foot pole after Aleida’s “I can’t work with her” office outburst

#margo x aleida #margo madison #aleida rosales #for all mankind

[purereflectionsworld]

This fourth chapter of my Aleida-Margo fic (set between S2 and S3) was an emotional roller-coaster to write, and goes out to everyone who feels just as deeply as I do about their relationship ❤️ There are so many ways these two *could* have gotten closer over that time period, and this fic - and this chapter in particular - reflects one of my personal theories. Of course, there’s a bit of bonus context for all the Margo/Sergei fans, too 😉

#for all mankind #margo x aleida #aleida rosales #margo madison #margo x sergei

[purereflectionsworld]

This goes out to all my fellow Aleida and Margo stans. Please enjoy the first three chapters of my fic which attempts to explore the delicious question of how Aleida and Margo went from cursing Margo out / calling Aleida a dumb kid in her office in Season 2, to family dinners with Tia Margo in Season 3. Margo is only in the background of the second and third chapters, but will return in the next installment.

Fic Description: My take on Aleida’s personal and emotional journey between Seasons 2 and 3 as she becomes a U.S. citizen, senior engineer, wife, mother - and perhaps most of all, Margo’s girl. Starts in 1984, some months after Apollo-Soyuz.

Multi-chapter fic, mostly from Aleida’s POV with a sprinkling of other perspectives (Margo, Victor). Fic and chapter titles are from the song “Turns Within Me, Turns Without Me” by The Paper Kites.

#for all mankind #margo x aleida #aleida rosales #margo madison #margo x sergei

[purereflectionsworld]

Here’s a snippet from an Aleida fic I’m working on, which I hope to post on AO3 once I’ve completed a few chapters. The goal is to fill in the gaps in her relationship with Margo, and Margo’s importance to her family, in that space between Seasons 2 to 3. This excerpt’s likely to be in Chapter 3, and is set in 1984. In which Aleida finds herself on a special first date, reminisces about Apollo-Soyuz, and realizes that Margo and Sergei’s relationship *might* not be as strictly professional as she’s assumed.

___

“So you’re one of the good Mexicans,” she says after he tells her about moving to Texas with his parents and brother when he was five - a perfectly uneventful journey in broad daylight - and her words come out about five shades more sarcastic than she’d intended.

He doesn’t smile. In fact, he’s looking at her very seriously. “The only bad Mexicans in my book are the ones who celebrate Cinco de Mayo, unless they’re actually from Puebla.”

She raises her eyebrows at him. She knows what a lot of the white collar Mexicans in Texas think of her kind. There’s a reason she’s never dated one of them before.

He sighs. “I will acknowledge that I’ve met a lot of Mexicans in my family’s circle here who don’t think like I do. Lot of them speak progressively, then treat my undocumented friends like shit. I’ve had to cut those people out of my life.” He meets her gaze, and her stomach flips over a little bit. “My ex-girlfriend, for one.” 

She doesn’t say anything for a little while. Then, quietly, she tells him about Mama’s grave in Parras de la Fuente, and the night that Americans landed on the moon. About Papa, and homework sessions in the viewing gallery, and tutoring sessions with the first woman in Mission Control, and the worst phone call of her life.

She doesn’t tell him that she used to be homeless, and was once shot at, and struggled to hold down a job, and dumped her ex unceremoniously the day he helped her get this one. That she’s still living in a trailer park and likely won’t be able to move out until she gets the double promotion Margo has been heavily hinting at. But as he reaches across the table to squeeze her hand, briefly, before clearing his throat awkwardly and turning his attention back to opening his beer, she thinks that maybe she could tell him, someday. 

He opens the bottle, takes a swig, and looks back at her. “Wow.”

“Yeah,” she says, giving him a little smile, so he knows it’s okay for him to talk again.

“So did you make it to the Kennedy School?”

“Yes, I did both tracks.”

“You know,” he says, smiling back at her, “I was waitlisted for one of the math tracks myself. Must have been ten years ago, too. If I’d spent a little more time studying, and a little less time DJing in my parents’ basement, we might have met. Which one did you do?”

It turns out that he currently teaches a lot of the advanced math she learned at the Kennedy School, so the conversation flows effortlessly back and forth between them for several minutes. He’s genuinely fascinated by all the ways she applies the concepts to design space shuttles, and satisfyingly incredulous that she works with idiots 10 years her senior who can’t keep up with her work.

“And your father?” he finally asks, gently, after the math banter reaches a comfortable lull. 

“Still in Parras. I’m working on it,” she adds defiantly, because his gaze is shifting to something like tenderness, and she doesn’t want his sympathy. “Now that I’m a U.S. citizen, I’m hoping to sponsor him officially. My boss is trying to help, and she’s well-connected, so we’ll see.”

“You’re a citizen already?” he says, eyes widening. “Aleida, that’s amazing! I’ve heard it’s an uphill climb out of the amnesty program. Sounds like you’re working on some high profile stuff so I figured you might be an LPR by now, but…”

“I got fast tracked as a one-off,” she says, and suddenly as she looks back at him and sees the spark of wonder in his eyes, she feels a twinge of happiness about it that she didn’t feel in Margo’s office when Ellen broke the news, or even on the phone with Papa afterward. “The NASA administrator’s in Reagan’s cabinet, and she got him to approve it personally. For ‘important contributions to national security.’”

“What mission?” he says almost in a whisper, enthralled. “You able to tell me?”

She smiles, takes a breath. It’s not a secret, but somehow she’s never talked about it outside of NASA and her calls to Papa. “Apollo-Soyuz.”

“Holy shit,” he breathes, and she feels a warm rush at his recognition. She’s sure he remembers exactly where he was when the sirens went off. “What did you do?”

“I came up with an important part of the docking mechanism. Stayed on the Mission Control floor with the team when most of the country went to the bomb shelters. And -“ She closes her eyes involuntarily, recalls that soaring feeling. “They let me give the order to the astronauts on the CAPCOM. I’ll never forget it. Apollo, Houston. You are go for docking.”

She opens her eyes, and swallows hard, because he’s exhaling, sitting all the way back in his chair, just staring at her with an intense mix of shock and admiration and pride. Pride that she realizes she only ever hears these days in Papa’s voice on the staticky phone line, and sees in Margo’s eyes, sometimes, framed by dark red strands of hair, in that brief flash after Aleida solves a particularly complex problem. 

*

“Okay,” he says twenty minutes later, taking another swig of beer, “so what I’m hearing is, you crashed your boss’ date with her Soviet counterpart the day you came up with the docking mechanism fix.”

“What? No, it wasn’t a date,” she laughs. “No way. You haven’t met Margo. If you had, you wouldn’t be saying that.”

“You said they were both dressed up kind of fancy, and that he was drunk when he complimented your work ethic. Oh, and that your friend Bill said the first Apollo-Soyuz meeting went so badly that your boss made an awkward sex joke by mistake and that the Soviet guy responded with a purposeful one. Did I hear all that right?”

She pauses, cocks her head. “Okay, I can see how you got that impression.”

“I rest my case,” Victor says, setting his empty bottle down with a grin.

#for all mankind #aleida rosales #margo madison #margo x aleida #margo x sergei #sorry not sorry that I can’t stop writing Victor

[purereflectionsworld]

Because the FAM fandom needs more Aleida fic - here are TWO by yours truly :)

#for all mankind #aleida rosales #margo x aleida #margo madison #really this is mostly Victor content #so much Victor #because Victor is hot and smart and loves her so much #can someone please gif their kiss in 4x05 #but of course there’s also angst over Margo