driftfleet | steve's luck with things that fly is nonexistent, really.

[give him a moment to finally eat--his personal cultural associations aside, he loves food, and he loves trying new things. he goes about it like a child who's been given a new toy, trying all the parts. tasting everything once before he figures out how he wants to eat it. some of everything on every scoop seems tactically sound.]

S'good. Kinda familiar. [chew chew chew. swap the tuna for blindfish, and the corn for that pond-weed they put in absolutely everything down there, and it's practically something he would have eaten back home. swallow.] What's Brooklyn like--uh, geographically?

[though confident, he says "Brook-lin" like he's never had to pronounce that before in his life. which he hasn't.]

[He has two answers to that question. As much as they're the same, they also couldn't be more different.

Idly, he reaches for the pepper shaker he'd set out in the middle of the table and shakes some over his food. Not a lot - he's still not a fan of excessive seasoning - but enough to taste.]

Brooklyn's [It's not corrective, but he does enunciate it very faintly for ease of later pronunciation.] one of five boroughs in New York City. It's a harbour trade port. For a long time it was the first place the immigrants saw when they came to America. Couldn't see the ocean from where I lived, but you could smell it. Climate's a variable. Cold in the winters, summers are warm. Rains in the spring and fall. Got a couple nice beaches, a few of the tallest skyscrapers in the country.

[He describes it without colour and form, a cautious man's cut-and-dry recollection. New York to him is a city of immigrants, of suffering. The Eugenics movement of the early 1900s hit it hard, his Ma made him promise never to take a glass of milk in any hospital that didn't come direct from her hands for fear someone would lace it with TB. The East River smelled like open sewage, even looking at it could get you typhoid back in his day. Couldn't eat anything you caught in it, either. Mostly the roads were still cobblestone, horses and carts and cars mingled in the roadways, drivers yelled at each other. Black smoke supplanted the sky, the buildings were stained with it. It's a city of gang warfare and bleak violence and tough people and too much hope. Hooverville is a fresh memory, more firmly entrenched than Central Park could ever be.

But that's what she means to him as a city, as a home. And Robin had asked for geography.]

[he copies the name again, silent and subtle. he'll get it soon; the only other place in the States he's heard of is "Minnesota", so he's not holding himself to very high standards. he continues to eat while he listens to this neat, rounded description of a city, looking more at his food than at Steve.

his initial commentary is just as simple as the answer, after a thoughtful sound:] Sounds busy.

[he doesn't expect his pilot to unpack why he says "busy" and not "nice" or "interesting", but there is a reason. he asked for geography because it's impersonal, easy to talk about--but just as the shape of a tree is dependent on the earth it's rooted in, cities are shaped by their surroundings, and people are shaped by their cities.

he hears "harbor trade port" and imagines a complex population of mingling cultures and ideals. lots of arguments. "immigrants" are important enough to get second detail; that implies a large influx, which no city is ever prepared for. segregation, mixed opinions, miserable jobs with miserable pay. overcrowding. economical strain. the rich build expensive skyscrapers to appeal to the global community, boost the trade and imports that the city is dependent on. the poor are dependent on the structures put in place by the rich, because the ocean's natural resources can't be enough to support anything more populated than a sea-side village.

so, busy. crowded, dirty, angry, conflicted. thick-skinned people, hard knocks turned to armor, badges of pride. he knows he'll never have the full picture, but this is a good start.

maybe he'll voice all of this, someday, but for now he only follows himself with a stupid little laugh and half a smirk.] And no spaceships, right?

[In a blasé deadpan,]

Got attacked by aliens a few years back. That count?

[If he knew of the inferences, he'd approve of their candor. Instead: sass.]

[the answer is just surprising enough that he opens his mouth to reply... before he can actually think of something to say. whatever train of thought he was following derails from the tracks entirely.]

I... Guess that counts. Like, the science fiction kind of alien?

[Rule number one: don't talk to Steve Rogers about trainwrecks. It always badly.

To the query, though, he nods and with his mouth currently full of biscuit, he instead makes a little mmhm of assent. He chases the mouthful with a swig of coffee, sets it down and more seriously,]

Lead by the Norse god of lies. Loki, if you've met him.

[Steve knows he's here, but they haven't spoken. With good reason, he supposes. These ships aren't built to survive a fight between a god and a supersoldier, and Steve has nothing but contempt for Loki. If he'd only ever attacked the Avengers, he might be willing to let bygones be bygones. But he'd gone after New York, and cost thousands of innocent lives. That, he can't forgive.]

[he was already looking skeptical (no one else from Earth has bothered mentioning aliens...), but now he narrows his eyes in outright wariness.]

I haven't met him. [and he really hasn't. he thinks back, frowning down at the table.] And he can't be much of a god if he's stuck here.

[Oh, Steve can spin a good line of bullshit if the mood and circumstances suit (his dad, after all, was in the 107^th) but he doesn't seem put-off by the skepticism. Instead, one corner of his mouth quirks.]

Guess that depends on your definition of 'god'.

[Jim asked him, a few short weeks ago, to say grace over a meal. It was the first time he'd done it in half a decade. Reaching for the belief in a higher power's gotten harder, the longer he's alive, the more he's seen, the more he's done. Trying to be a good man and being one immutably are two different things, in his mind. Faith in something you can't touch seems less important now than faith in the people next to you, but maybe that's it's own religion. The battlefield sort, one that's born in foxholes and baptized in bars.

He shakes his head a little, and drains off the last of his coffee.]

Want anything else to drink?

[his own definition of 'god' is specific and fragile and, unfortunately, something he can't afford to have challenged. back home, Vincent used to comment on how how funny it was: for all of Robin's bitter denunciations of the priests, the teachings, the rituals, and the stories, church was about the only place he'd ever shut up.

he knows he's overreacting (like an auto-immune disorder) as he bites down on his tongue and looks down at what's left of his food. at the easy chance out, he slides his only-half-empty mug over without a fight.]

Please. [his tone is flat and tellingly self-deprecating.] Before I can start in on philosophical theology.

[And so, he fills it.]

Don't think we've got enough liquor for that.

[His mouth quirks up at one corner, he matches that self-deprecation wryly.]

[hey, he likes that kind of humor. it loosens him back into laughing, kind of a snort as he pulls his mug back.]

Jy'b idyua, you're not wrong. Backing up, here...

[he's fine not getting stuck here. he gestures against the table, light chops to divide his thoughts up into easy steps.]

Okay, attacked by aliens... Led by a... Mythological figure...? [he hopes he got those context clues right.] Please tell me that wasn't just something that happens twice a week on good old planet Earth.

Tuesdays and Saturdays, like clockwork.

[That's a bit of a deadpan for you, Robin. He spears a piece of carrot and chews on it thoughtfully before he answers for real.]

Aliens attacking-- just the once in two years. [Well. The Dark Elves happened, but he was in South America and well out of radio contact while Thor dealt with that, so he doesn't really count it.] Most've the threats I deal with are human. Some enhanced, most not.

Jeez. [said into his mug, as he lifts it to drain some of that half-new coffee.

Earth seems like a very confusing place. he's gotten very used to asking stupid, basic questions about it. if he had the chance to talk about Gratia at length, he'd sound like a scholar--but he'll play the role of tourist out of necessity.

two years. tick tick tick. his eyebrows furrow, just a little.] What's the legal minimum age for enlistment? For your branch, I mean.

[The question is just uncanny enough that Steve raises an eyebrow rather than reply immediately. He turns his coffee cup for his left hand, instead, and takes a drink.]

Eighteen. Seventeen with parental consent.

[The why do you ask? goes unspoken, but it hangs in the air.]

[apparently this answers his question. his eyebrows go back up again with the metaphorical lightbulb of sudden understanding--and he picks up his fork again.]

That's why. Mine's fourteen. It's stupid, but I kept thinking you look about five years too old to have only served seven.

[and then there's eating again. like "fourteen" doesn't drag around a bunch of horrible implications, and like he didn't just assume Steve joined the military right out the door.]

[There's a sort of wintry resolve that shuts down his expression entirely, and all traces of amicability vanish, replaced by a rigidity to his shoulders and jaw that give away his anger all too readily.

There were plenty of kids in the resistance movements. The Maquisards couldn't afford to turn away any helping hands, and in Belgium-- well. Kids were overlooked. More likely to be let go by the Germans if detained. Most German soldiers weren't monsters. But he knows at least one boy was shot for smuggling pork in France.]

I didn't enlist until I was twenty-two.

[It's the only thing he can say that isn't snarling disapproval for Robin's concession. It's not like it would've been his fault anyway, and all Steve's frostburnt anger is for the people in charge that could let that happen. There are always folks willing to send children to die, and it never stops galling him less.]

[thankfully, his reaction is a quiet one. he carefully tenses up against a sudden threat, instinct telling him that he's got to run or he's got to fight. he doesn't move while his thoughts scramble between "I'm sorry" and "well aren't you fucking lucky" and the realization that he's drastically miscalculated something about Steve Rogers.

again.

four years ago, he would have already snarled back, bared all his teeth. today, he just... starts picking at his food with his fork, a couple of short movements to get back into the present and remember how to have a physical body.

nothing about this is subtle, but he has a soft twin set of voices at the back of his head telling him that it's okay and it's not his fault. he postures with the best of them, but his avoiding eye contact betrays him in a second.

he's nervous.]

I am just... Hitting all the heavy notes, aren't I?

[there, a quirk of his lips in the vague shape of a smile or a smirk or... something. it doesn't matter, because neither of them would be even remotely genuine, and it doesn't last long before he softly exhales his pent-up anxiety down at the table.]

I know. It's not good. I forget that it's... One of those things that people get surprised about, that's all.

[And he forgets, in turn, that he presents the threat he does now. His anger isn't some small and impotent thing. He can (has) ripped concrete apart with his bare hands, bent metal, broken stone. He lets go of the emotion abruptly, like something hot held too long, and his shoulders sag. He forgets.

Steve doesn't apologize much. It's not part of who he is. He does what he does and says what he says because he means it, and that's always (usually) the end of it. Now he glances up, brows drawn down, and clears his throat. His tone is gentled when he speaks again,]

I'm sorry. That-- wasn't directed at you.

[It's not often he despises the gift Erskine's given him. Now, it leaves a sour taste in his mouth, and what food he's eaten is leaden in his gut. He hates that he can scare people, that his very existence is intimidating to them, and that one moment of misconstrued anger can shatter tenuous camaraderie. He breathes, and studies his hands. Too broad across the knuckles. Re-learning how to hold a pencil was perhaps the most challenging adjustment after Rebirth. He feels awkward and outsized and entombed in the serum's perfect resultant husk. He continues quietly,]

I've got a hard time seeing anyone in war. Kid's've always been the worse, and fourteen is still a child to me. I disagree on principle with any institution that would allow it. Not your fault.

[he feels weak, but he's not being hurt for it. there's no knife, there's no blame. the better part of him is encouraged to keep trusting that it's okay, despite many, many lifetimes of experiencing otherwise.

the other man didn't have to apologize, after all. he didn't have to soften his voice or explain, and his words aren't even weighted with pity. he glances up and sees that Steve's withdrawn into his own space, leaving plenty of room for Robin to slink out of his own proverbial armor.

for a second, he looks almost as inhuman as he feels--perched and still and unblinkingly observant. layers of it shed away as he slides over, reaching with his arm, practically melting against the surface of the table. it's slow enough to be obvious, maybe even a little comical, because his next move is to lightly tap the back of Steve's hand, twice, with one of his own gloved fingers.

Robin always wears gloves, even while he's eating. funny little detail.]

Don't worry about it. [he looks up at him from his low vantage point. he doesn't look nervous anymore, nor is he pretending to smile.] Not your fault for feeling strongly about it, either.

[he really means "don't worry about me" and "not your fault for caring deeply about something enough to make a mistake", and maybe even a hidden "sorry for overreacting myself", but those are all things you don't say in front of someone who wants to keep themselves hidden in as many ways as possible.

which is why he puts on some of his normal face again, almost laughing even though he's still leaning all over the table.]

Fuck, now that I think about it, I think I'd be more worried if you didn't have a reaction. Shit's awful.

[It's neither the first nor the last time that he draws a breath and thinks about how much he hates the war. Not one in particular - his is a specific one, a series of memories in foxholes and aid tents across Europe, but when it comes right down to it they're all the same. Young men and women and innocents dying for what old men believe. War never ends, it just changes hands. Korea followed his. Vietnam. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan, people died in droves in Cambodia and Ghana and Rwanda. Resources, money, religion, and he is so tired of the fight. He woke in a world where nothing had changed. Zola's words corrode his ideals in the dark. A zero sum.

Robin touches the back of his hand, and he stares at the point of contact hyperfocused, like an anchor. The gloves are something else that's put on a shelf for later examination. With a humourless quirk to his mouth,]

Awful's one word for it.

[Again, his voice is soft. 'Awful'. One of many. He could dip into the resources of every language he knows and still not have a colourful enough vocabulary to describe his hatred of the war machine. He flexes the fingers of the hand Robin had touched as if brushing aside the cobwebs of a bad memory, and picks up his fork.]

How long were you in?

[at the question, he slides sluggishly back in the direction he'd come, returns to sitting like a normal person. his answer, however, is a conflicted quiet groan. how does he even start with something like this?]

That gets... pretty complicated. And mine's barely formal, or anything. [he waves a hand a little before picking up his own fork again, attempting to return to the idea of food.] I had a good friend back home who served a while, and knew a lot of others in or out of terms, but I can't pretend to be them.

[he's been a lot of things. he's fought in a lot of battles, on lots of sides. he's genuinely held several ranks, several times, just like he's also genuinely been a doctor and a priest and a dance instructor and a mercenary-for-hire. but he's never considered himself a soldier, not once, not really.]

That's fair.

[And he knows when to drop a topic. He gives Robin a thoughtful look, not bothering to hide it. Curious more than dissecting. Then he lets himself slouch just slightly in his chair. Enough to indicate a certain level of casual intent.]

So what did you do before Atroma decided to extend their hospitality?

[do u hear the unbridled irritation in the way he says the word 'Atroma'?]

If you don't mind my asking.

[he's not bothered by Steve's curiosity at all. he's used to being a mystery to everyone around him, regardless of whether or not he spins the web intentionally. this feels normal, in a way that things rarely are anymore.

and it's so satisfying to hear his irritation turn towards Atroma. his smirk is wide, this time, carries into what he says.]

I don't, but... Are you looking for the informative answer, or the one that gives your alien bit a run for its money?

[Don't think he doesn't see that smirk, young ('old') man. Steve rolls his right shoulder back and leans his elbows on the table. It's all very un-Catholic of him, his Ma would've swatted him for the offense once upon a time.]

Surprise me.

[oh good. a challenge.]

Well, technically I haven't been on my own world for a little over four years. Before this nonsense-- [waving vaguely with a fork, indicating the whole of the Drift Fleet.] --I'd been dropped in three other, I don't know, dimensions for no apparent reason.

[he puts some of the last dregs of his food in his mouth, does that thing where he explains carefully around a mouthful again.] Maybe three and a half, depending on whether you count jumping a good hundred years into the future.

[because he could say a lot about what he used to do back home, but... he has't been doing any of it for a while. some people change their whole lives in four years, and he's not necessarily an exception.]

One of those was six months trapped in an underground network of dragon dens. Their king was paranoid and crazy and my being there was a huge threat to everything. It was fun.

[not that he's. bitter. about that, still. (he totally is.)]

steve's luck with things that fly is nonexistent, really.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)