driftfleet | Action + Video | Captain on the bridge. Sort of...

Entry tags:

Action + Video | Captain on the bridge. Sort of...

Who: Steve and you!

Broadcast: Video, yes: Fleetwide

Action: SS Bishop
When: Yesterday, after arrival

ACTION:
Steve has just about managed to acquaint himself with the strange, new idea that he is now in space when the next curve is thrown his way. One second he's standing in a hallway, just about to walk up and ask someone if they have any idea what he's doing here. The next, he's...on a bridge. With confetti? And are those pudding cups? What the Hell is going on? He blinks around, his first instinct to always look and see if there is some sort of fight about to happen. Hands are in fists and he really wishes his shield was somewhere around here. But he dropped that in the dirt a few months ago, so fat chance.

Steve will stand down slowly, once no one attacks him right off the bat. Sadly, he's been in this position before; in a strange place and time, not knowing why or how. His thoughts are back on Earth and with the friends he's broken out of their floating prison and now, seemingly, abandoned. Maybe there is a way out of here. Or, maybe, he's needed here more? Hopefully someone is going to be able to talk him through it all.

VIDEO:

Many hours later, Steve sends out a broadcast, finally understanding how and wanting to reach out to anyone else that might be here. Anyone else he might know.

"Uh. Hey. My name is Steve Rogers. Hopefully I'm doing this right and you can all see and hear me. I just arrived about..." He looks down at something and then scrubs a hand over his face as though in disbelief. "Two days ago. A lot got packed into those days, it seems. But I'm sure you all know how that feels."

Steve pauses, shifting a bit before getting closer to the camera, face serious. "I've met some people here so I know that what happened to me has happened to a lot of other good people. I have questions and a lot of things I want to look into. But first, I want to know who else is out there. Who else might have the same questions I do and who wants to start getting some answers."

He moves back and tries to smile. "Or who maybe just wants to talk? Anything. So, yeah. Thanks. How do I....um. Is it this butt-"

Video cuts off abruptly.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Oh, I bet I've had worse." Dryly, not assigning much weight to the comment or elaborating on it further. Cabbage soup isn't high on her list of hopes and dreams, but having it with friends... she can find some affection for that.

"And I can't guarantee something that will get you drunk, but in my experience, it always works better when you don't drink alone." Whether at dinner or on the Iskaulit, or down the line when they stop in at the next planet, Natasha has no problem volunteering to be a drinking buddy.

"You say that now. You've never had two potatoes, a head of cabbage, and Bucky Barnes determined to add enough spices to make a soup." It was probably the only liquid outside of seawater with enough salt to actually dehydrate you as you drink it. Not even the potatoes could save it.

Steve smiles at the memory all the same.

"I definitely think that company could improve the drinks' effect. And at least I know none of us have a lot of plans yet. Just. Drifting along." He exhales, disheartened all over again.

"I keep worrying about what's going on at home. All the ways things can go wrong without us there to help..."

"You might be surprised." There are so many things that she won't answer to that, even to Steve. Things she won't or can't joke about here and now, because they bring up their own questions or involve revealing things when hiding them is second nature. She could say how close she'd been with Barnes here. She could say that she still bets it beats a Soviet orphanage or training facility. She could laugh, because it's a joke and people laugh at jokes. She could tell him about some of the things going on at home and where it goes. Instead she looks away, her smile half a grimace.

Natasha holds it all in, refocusing on him a half second later when she's pushed the awkwardness down.

"For what it's worth, we don't miss things back home. As far as everyone else is concerned, we never left." That's the good news. "Sometimes something happens around here, and suddenly we wake up with more memories, new scars, things like that. It's... pretty awful, actually." Somehow, she injects a little real humor into that last admission. "There's a lot messing with our heads, and sometimes it seems like we're just waiting to remember what's going on only to find out it's all gone to hell."

But it's not because they missed anything.

Steve isn't stupid at all. He can feel the awkward pause following her comment and watches her carefully to try and figure out why. He could go ahead and ask but something tells him that he wouldn't like the answer he'd get back. Either he'll feel bad for the joke or...

Or.

Too much is going on today for him to add on an 'Or'. So he mentally shelves it to be picked up again some other time when he can handle it all better. And then Nat keeps talking, so it's easy to put it all aside to deal with the next batch of good and bad news about this weird limbo they're living in.

"Well. I guess with time travel, that makes sense. We can spend years here and then get dropped back the same second we left. No one would know we were gone and, without memories, we wouldn't know either." It is a strange thing to think about. How everything that happens here can be erased so completely. Everyone he meets and talks to so completely destroyed. He has no idea what to even do with information, now, but it settles heavy in his stomach.

"Are the new memories real? Thinks that have happened from home?" Steve's pit in his stomach drops out even more.

"What have you seen from home?"

"They're real." Well, there's room to quibble over that. Who knows if any of this is real. Natasha prefers not to go down that rabbit hole, though. "People who come from home, from after us, corroborate. If it is just the Atroma messing with us, they go all the way with it."

That last question, though, that's complicated.

"It's not always a good idea to know what's coming before you remember it yourself, Steve." And she means that. Because it's Steve, she won't turn him down outright.

Steve's heard things. Hints that something terrible has happened. This warning makes him think that it is worse than he even could imagine. He swallows hard and leans against the nearest wall to brace himself.

"What's happened?" He is never one to walk away from something. Not even when a loaded gun is pointed at his head. He needs to know and he wants to hear it from a friend.

For a moment, she doesn't answer. Natasha looks in his eyes, studying his expression, and wondering if even leaving him in the dark wouldn't still be more merciful. Whatever he comes up with, it wouldn't be worse than the reality.

But it's only a fantasy.

"We lose, Steve." That's the simplest answer. "We lose when it matters the most."

Simple words. Simple words with a simple meaning. They lost. There was a fight and, for once, they lost. Steve goes cold, heart stopping in his chest as he considers what this means.

"What...did we lose?" It's not the right question and he knows it as soon as the words leave his mouth. It might be a 'what' but that's not what matters. He can tell by the look on her face.

"Who did we lose?"

"Are you sure you want to do this to yourself, Steve?" Because he doesn't have to. Because knowing won't help, and there's not a whole lot they can do about it here. Because the real answer is so much more than anyone can be ready for.

She shakes her head briefly, the gesture cut short because she knows the answer. Steve Rogers never ran from anything, did he?

"The guy we're up against had a very simple goal: the end of half of all life." Does that tell him just how much they lost? She's not sure it's the same without putting names to it. "Not just on earth, but everywhere. We couldn't stop him."

Calling this a punch to the gut doesn't cut it. It's a sword to the throat. It's a mallet to his chest that's smashed the bones into pieces so his heart is exposed and bruised. It's the worst thing he's ever heard. And he knows it's going to get worse.

He walks to the wall, bracing his hands against it as he tries to breathe. It is hard to manage over these new, bleeding wounds inside him.

Half of all life. Half of all life....

"Who?"

Who did they fail?

There's a long moment before Natasha answers. She goes over the list in her head. Where is she even supposed to start something like this? Wrapping her arms around herself, she says, "I haven't told the others."

Which isn't to say that he can't, but there are reasons not to. If he decides to share, it will be news to them.

And he'll be shedding light on Natasha's secrets.

"Vision. Wanda. Barnes." A pause, because she knows Steve won't hear anything after that, not for a moment. She wishes the list stopped there. "Sam. T'Challa. Tony is MIA. Best intel is that he and Spider-man were between Thanos and us. Those are the ones I know."

The names hit him like bullets. It shouldn't be worse, knowing who they lost, but some how it is. The names make it real. It makes him feel the mourning more acutely now that he has faces to the tragedy. And it's worse than he could have expected.

He knows Bucky is on the list. He knows before she says it because that seems to be their lot in life. In the pause, he lets out a humorless laugh and the rest of the names just wash over him, salt in that particular wound. When Nat is done, he's quiet for a long moment. And then he speaks to the wall:

"You know what the history books always get wrong? They always make Buck this hooligan I ran with. But the truth is that he was a good kid. Nuns loved him. Everyone did. It was me they warned him about. 'Stay away from that Rogers boy; he's nothing but trouble'."

He's quiet again so nothing preludes him rearing back a fist and punching it into the wall, hard. His knuckles split and bleed, but it will heal. It's only then that he turns and looks at Nat.

"How do we fix it?"

"I wish I knew." There's sympathy in her voice, and determination too. She's not giving up. The benefit of time is that she's processed enough to know that there will be something they can do. "The last I remember was just after it happened. I don't even know who else we lost."

She drifts closer to him. Her posture stays closed, arms crossed, but it seems better to be close.

"But we'll find a way. There's still us..." Even if this is well above either of their pay grade. "Thor. Bruce. Rhodey. Once we're home, we can see who else made it... we'll go from there."

He wants to punch the wall until his hand breaks. Wants to demand everything out of Nat that he can get. But none of that is going to change what happened or what is happening now. The timeline might change and it might not. And if it doesn't, he has to find strength from the confidence in Nat's voice. The words that they will find a way. Because they will.

"We're going to figure it out." He reaches out with the hand that's not bleeding and grips Nat's shoulder tight. "We're going to fix it."

Because if they don't, he's not sure what he's going to do. Everyone he knows...his old family and his new one all have been decimated. There has to be a fix or he's going to die trying.

What else could they do? Neither of them was the kind to lay down. Natasha doesn't address whether or not they'll be able to fix it. This might be too much to fix. But they'll do something—because someone has to.

They'll make it better.

She leans into Steve's hand, unwinding her arms to slip one around him in a tentative hug.

"Still want a drink?"

He leans into it himself, needing the hug more than he thought he did. At the question he laughs, shaking his head. "Yeah. Yeah, do you have antifreeze? Maybe that will give me a buzz." Which is a shame because he wants to get drunk. Really drunk. Sixteen year old drunk.

Stupid serum.

"We could always see if Thor has something." Because if anyone would have liquor that would get Steve drunk, it would be him. It's also a way of hinting that Thor knows too. That's something the three of them have in common now, even if Steve doesn't really remember yet. "Probably it would taste better than antifreeze or formaldehyde, at least."

She doesn't try to rush the hug, either, giving him what comfort she can. She doesn't regret telling him, but she still wishes he didn't have to find out.

"Thor..."

Steve shakes his head, not even wanting to think about what that man must be going through. "Loki told me about Asgard. That with this...this genocide on top of it?" Yeah. Yeah, they needed to get drunk as soon as possible. Steve flexed his knuckles, the skin already knitting over in the shallow spots.

"Hopefully he has something really strong..."

"If he's gone through anything he had stashed, I wouldn't blame him. But..." She tries to make her tone more practical, solving the problem at hand. It's about all she can do. "Worst case scenario, we see what we can find in the next system. Unfortunately, all I have left is a couple of bottles of something that's almost vodka."

Steve makes a grimacing face at that idea. Something almost vodka? He barely even liked vodka as it was. He's not about to eat it in a gel form or whatever else they had here. He smiles and shakes his head. "I heard something about a...an Iska....Iskal...Something. They apparently have food and drink. Any good?"

"It's okay. Most of what you'll find over there is what the people running the places have been able to pick up. Alcohol tends to be more reliable than food, but..." Natasha shrugs. She thinks of Jarvis and his cafe. "All depends who's working. Sometimes you can find something good there. Better than cabbage soup."

He grins, scrunching up his nose in memory. "Nothing could be worse than cabbage soup with stale bread. I had it almost for a month straight before I got a paycheck and we could add some carrots to it." He nudges Nat and tries to keep the smile on. "And maybe we'll get lucky with the alcohol. Different universes and all."

Natasha matches his smile, both the effort and the difficulty. But they're together on this again, and that counts for something. She doesn't want to admit it, but the fact Steve and Thor know now, that she's not the only Avenger carrying around this information, it takes a lot off her shoulders.

"I'll keep an eye out. And for the time being, well... like I said. If you want company."

"I am always going to want company.. "

Steve sighs and looks down, the loss weighing down on him once again. The failure that the both of them share. He can't imagine what it must have been like to hold on to that secret. What it must be like to know what happened and to be stuck here, unable to stop any of it.

"When I left. You...you gave up a lot to help me and Buck. So as far as I see it, with Bucky the way he is right now, you're probably the best friend I've got here. Of course I'll want your company."

"I did what I had to do." It was the best call in that moment. She'd seen that clearly in the moment—that Steve and Tony were going to collide until one or the other of them broke, and the only way to prevent the worst case scenario was for someone to take the wheel and swerve.

She stood by that.

"You told me once you wanted a friend. That's what you got, for better or worse." Her smile is rueful, remembering that conversation. Among other things.

Action + Video | Captain on the bridge. Sort of...

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