driftfleet | 'cause it's better than nothing

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'cause it's better than nothing

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ROOMS BY CHARACTER

N - P

Otono-Tachibana Makie

Q - S

Sandalio "Biffy" de Rabiffano

T - V

W - Z

(last updated: 1/25/19)

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Steve doesn't know where he is. And yet, he does. The yellow color and the shape brings to mind someone he knows well. The Vision, he thinks as he walks into this strange room, both curious and attempting to find a way out. But he knows now from experience that there likely is no way out. Not without going through the room first.

Steve looks around, not wanting to pry but feeling like there was really no way not to in here. His eyes fall on the auburn-haired woman and the red panel she is in. Steve smiles, comforted by this as he walks forward and presses his hand against it. Surely this was a good piece of the Vision.

Surely this was something he knew.

The panel flickers under Steve's touch, and the video memory in it enlarges and becomes a full-color hologram, almost like being there. It plays from the first person perspective, and it doesn't take much to realize it's from the Vision's point of view.

We fly to the top of a rocky spire at night, surrounded by desert and other weathered rocks. The sky is full of uncountable stars, with constellations never known to Earth dancing around in a brilliant view. We're both wearing environmental suits; I don't need to breathe, really, but it's easier to speak over the helmet radios this way and I can't collect samples if I decide to be intangible.

I move to stand behind Wanda and place my hand on her shoulder, not wanting to lose the contact of our hands holding but trying to match her gaze at everything. There are deserts on Earth, to be sure, but nothing quite like this, even without the endless starfield unblocked by atmosphere.

"There aren't cameras that can catch the same level of detail the human eye can. Not while preserving the same light. For all that technology moves ever forward, there are still transient forms of beauty you must see in order to experience."

The urge to pull her back so she rests against my chest is almost too strong to resist. Almost. But still I hold back. She's not ready yet. Soon, perhaps, but the last thing I want to do is force her into something and pushing her away by mistake.

"There is so much to see, so much to do. I want you to know all of it."

And I will, I promise myself. On whatever level she feels comfortable with.

It's beautiful. Everything here is so beautiful. Steve has to tear his gaze away from the stars in order to watch Vision and Wanda. It makes him smile despite the empty ache in his heart that can barely remember what this must have felt like, once. Steve remembers talking to Wanda on the ship and seeing how she glowed talking about the Vision.

Love. True love. He'd seen it starting in his timeline and now he could see just how beautiful it would grow to be.

"You were so patient with her. So kind." Steve's mind drifts elsewhere, smile turning wistful and sad. He pushes it away. "She is lucky to have you, Vision. You're good for her. And she's good for you."

The walls around Steve seem to pulse with a brighter light, and a feeling of quiet contentment spreads throughout the room. All the adjacent panels are now tinged with red and show Wanda in a variety of situations - laughing, smiling quietly, concerned, sobbing against the Vision's chest, adnry with red-glowing eyes, even fighting in her own unique style. There are some from what's obviously Earth and others from what are just as obviously alien planets, as well as some from Fleet ships. It's clear that every one of these is important to him.

But linked to these are a few other memories with other faces Steve might recognize: Bruce, Tony, Sam, Natasha.

Bucky.

Steve smiles at all of these images. Wanda is a fantastic friend and deserved so much more than she had gotten. To see her here so at peace and so strong. Steve can almost forgive the kidnapping if it's given her all of this. Given her and Vision a chance to have it.

He watches the memories and sees the faces of others he knows. Tony. Just seeing his face is a punch to the stomach. But then there's also Nat and Sam and...

Bucky.

Steve had heard he was here before. And after everything he's heard about what's waiting for them in the future, he isn't a strong enough man to not step forward and press his palm to the glass to see more...

The panel flashes a few scenes, all with the background of the Fleet - Bucky on security footage on the Iskaulit brutally fighting with a pink-haired woman, Bucky talking calmly on a video feed on a ship's bridge, a comically small Bucky yelling into a communicator, Bucky and various other crewmembers sitting around a table and eating a meal. The one that flashes when Steve touches is a bit different: Bucky, currently one-armed, climbing through a forest on an alien planet.

I'm flying well above the forest of the hand-holding planet. Off in the distance is a massive tree - I've heard it has magical properties, and of course local legend would have it that its powers only work if you go there while holding someone's hand, but I'm curious about it regardless and want to see it for myself. Just then, something on the path below me catches my attention. There's a figure climbing up a steep incline, but all of a sudden an animal jumps out from behind a fallen tree. The figure startles, but since they only have one arm they can't catch themselves before they fall.

One arm. It's Winter!

I dive down to try and intercept the man before he seriously hurts himself, and in my rush I miscalculate my own density. He smacks his head against my chest, and the impact knocks me back into the tree I'd been trying to protect him from. We're both knocked out by the impact.

My last thought is that Wrath is going to murder us both for being so stupid.

Steve has no idea what to do, here. He watches the scene and his breathing catches as Bucky falls. Where is his other arm? But then Vision is going after him and. Oh. Ouch. That all must have hurt. But Vision survived clearly and Bucky must have too so is it funny? Is it horrifying? Steve just watches until it ends and then looks around, wondering where Vision is.

"I didn't know you and Bucky were friends. Did he go by Winter?"

He has no idea if Vision can answer, but it's worth a try.

In lieu of a direct answer, another memory flashes up. This one features the Vision talking to a short woman with long, pink hair and high heels that could kill a man. She's dressed in the flexarmor the Fleet supplies for its Security personnel, but her face would be totally unfamiliar to Steve.

"I trust him," Wrath says to me, and I blink at the unexpected comment. The man she calls Winter is a deadly assassin, a tool of shadow organizations, utterly unknown to most of us. But there had been a radically different version of the same man here, another James Buchanan Barnes - one who had taken up the mantle of Captain America after losing his best friend Steve Rogers to the same shadowy organization. I'd known Jim, and I'd trusted him. He was a good man, and I miss him still. To differentiate between them, this one had named himself Winter.

"Because you understand him, to an extent?" I ask, wanting to clarify. Wrath is a good first mate, offering kindness and friendship easily, but there are only a few people she trusts. I'm fortunate to be one of them.

"I think," she says slowly, furrowing her brow in that way I've come to recognize as her trying to pick the right words for something, "our demons are next-door neighbors."

I've seen Wrath's Calibrations room. Memory wipes, being unable to trust the thoughts in your own head, being used as a tool by the people you were supposed to be able to trust--trying to find yourself despite it. Being suddenly free of that influence, and drifting lost without purpose. Wrath had been so thoroughly used that she didn't even remember her own name, just the codename her government had given her.

The parallels are there. I just haven't seen them before.

This one hurts. Steve wants to look away from what Wrath has gone through because it still is too painful to remember what Bucky has been through. But at the same time, this is honest. This is the face of the abuse that these two people lived through and Steve owes it to them to stare it in the face and bear what he can of the burden.

It will never be enough.

The idea of another Bucky--a Bucky that was Captain America-- is baffling to him. How many universes are there? What kind of world is it where he worked for Hydra? How did Bucky find him there? Or did he at all? He has too many questions and a stone in his throat he can't swallow around. When he speaks, his voice is strained.

"She seems a good person. I am glad that he had her, here. Someone who understood where he came from...it's good. Real good..."

Unlike the other responses so far, a voice comes directly from one of the screens where what looks like dense strings of nonsense words come together to form the image of the Vision's face. His voice sounds normal, though, if a bid sad.

"She was a good friend who demonstrated her dedication to doing the right things too many times to count. I trusted her implicitly, and she trusted Winter." Because he still thinks of that version of Bucky as Winter. It's the easiest way to keep them separated, and that's what Wrath always called him, anyway. He pauses before continuing, and briefly an image of Bucky done in watercolors appears on the screen next to the representation of the Vision's face.

"If I'd been able to carry that memory with me on my return home, I would have handled the situation in Germany in a very different manner. I am sorry."

Steve shakes his head, trying not to look at the portrait of his best friend and then finding himself unable to. "That's not your fault, Vision. You did what you thought was right and so did I. I can't blame you for that just like I can't blame Tony, either. We all...we did what we thought was right."

What he still thinks is right, frankly. Even if he does, sometimes, wonder if he was blinded by his friendship for Bucky. He'd had no one from his past for so long and then, suddenly, the most important person in his life. There was never going to be any other choice for him. In the end, Bucky would always be the one he picked.

"There was...more than one of him?"

The face made of code melts back into the facet of the gem it came from, and it's replaced with a still image of a surgery suite viewed from the outside, with Rhodey on the other side of the glass hooked up to many machines and attended by figures in scrubs and masks. the voice continues to speak, however.

"No, Captain. I did what I believed I had to in order to continue existing in your society. It's a simpler choice for someone like Mr. Stark, whose enhancements depend on machinery he can remove at will. For those of us who must always live with them, the right choice would have been to protest the ruling. I believed we could modify the terms of the Accords given enough time on monitored behavior without causing any mishaps, but we were not given that time."

The picture shifts to show an unfamiliar neighborhood at night, and a Wanda Maximoff looking a bit older and with a different hairstyle and manner of dress. She's smiling brilliantly up at him, and that might be a bit of blush in her cheeks. "It took remarkably little time for me to break the Accords after the rest of you departed, I will note."

But of course Steve would want to know more about Bucky. Four panels light up, each with a different face. The first looks like a heartbreakingly older version of the clean-cut soldier Steve had known back in WWII. The second is the painting he'd been looking at. The third is a variation on the same theme: no prosthetic and a slightly different haircut, dressed in Fleet clothing and with determination in his haunted eyes. The last is the Bucky currently in the Fleet, a picture of him down on the snow planet looking wary.

Steve stares at the first picture. It's Bucky from so many years ago and yet not at the same time. His eyes drift from face to face to face, finally ending on the last one. The one who is here now and avoiding him. It's at that he finally looks away and toward the other side of room.

"This...this isn't about me, here," he says. He's not really sure what this is all about, here, regardless. But he doesn't need to use the Vision like some encyclopedia to get information on someone who doesn't want him to have it.

"Is there anything you want to show me, Vision? Anything that you wish for me to see? Understand?"

There's a bit of delay as the images of Bucky fade back into the background of usual random clips, but finally it seems that he does have something to show after all.

One panel enlarges to show a video of a ship that is, by all appearances, one of the Fleet ships. But (and Steve may not realize it, being as new as he is), it's one that's no longer in service. The contents of the cargo bay are largely the same as on the Vision's current ship, but there are some differences in the shape and configuration of the hull and the shuttles in the background have a half-familiar symbol on them that's not to be found on any of the current ships.

Inside the cargo bay itself, there's a small table set up with cake, ice cream, and the usual assortment of Fleet dishes. People are gathered all around - some familiar, like Kitty and Wanda, and others that are no longer here that he won't recognize. One of them stands out immediately - it's Steve himself.

And, though she's not in the room itself, when the point of view focuses instead on the communicator in his hand, the video is an impossible thing. That's not just any Fleet passenger he's talking to, it's Peggy Carter.

Steve looks out at the cake and the ice cream. It looks like a party and a good one at that. But then he sees the face on the communicator and his heart stops in his chest.

"Peggy..."

He knew she was here. Loki had said as much before. That she had been here and that she had married someone, too. He would never fault her that happiness. Not on Earth and certainly not here. But it was one something to know it and another to see it with his own eyes. To see her, young and alive once more. God, it had been just months ago that he'd held her coffin.

"Oh, God. Peggy... Vision, what is this?"

The face of code emerges again to one side of the video memory, which keeps playing the scene of his first birthday party here. (There's even a talking, bright pink pony; she'd loved parties.)

"That people can appear from different points in time is not limited to a scale of a few years around the early twenty-first century. I won't claim we knew each other well, but she was here in her youth for a time. I thought you should know that is a possibility, though one unlikely to repeat itself."

"I...I heard she was married." Steve watches the memory with longing in his eyes. It's memories he apparently had at one point that are now lost to him, forever. He is there. He is there in that room and has absolutely no memory of it. Of her. Young and alive and with him. And unlikely to repeat itself here.

Impossible to repeat in his world.

"It's good. That you were all...together. That there was good times here, despite it all."

"I believe that occurred while I was absent from the fleet." He'd heard something about it from Sam, and he's got a pretty good idea of who the groom was, but it's probably best not to mention that to Steve at all.

Instead he responds to the second part. "There have been many good times here. I know it is difficult when you first arrive, and there are certainly times of distress and danger." A few images flash by quickly: a pink-haired woman (familiar from the memory of Winter) on a med-bay bed attached to many machines and heavily bandaged, dark shapes moving around a sickly-looking swamp through unnatural fog, a long and sterile corridor of a ship that brings an impression of a deep cold, and more than one image of a network recording with a name and a has left the Fleet message.

"But I've been happy here as well." The images shift again, and these are almost all memories of individuals (though sometimes in fantastic locations). Wrath again, standing next to a painting of a sunset and adding even more color. A snowball fight in a magicked room of the Iskaulit. A sense of deep satisfaction as machinery around them beings to move correctly and the group of engineers exchange high-fives and fistbumps. Kitty Pryde standing on thin air to water plants on a shelf, beaming a smile at him to welcome him back to the ship. The same memory Steve first saw, flying over the barren desertscape with countless stars above and Wanda by his side. Wanda kissing him underneath a massive tree in the middle of a continent-wide forest. "I feel as though my time in the Fleet has helped me grow as an individual. I hope you come to enjoy it as much as I have, Captain Rogers."

"But then we lose it all..."

Steve, ever used to the good things in his life being taken away, can't help but point that fact out. He's been here before. He saw Peggy and who knew who else and remembers none of it. Whatever he learned and saw and experienced is lost to him forever. Just like it will be for every other person who comes here.

"The options are to either stay and be kidnapped forever or...to be sent home. Who knows when or how. And then you're back in your previous life and you lose it all." He looks toward Wrath and frowns, knowing already that this woman meant something to him. And that, leaving, she probably has no memory of all that occurred here.

"I wonder if growing to love it here isn't worse than hating it..."

There's a long pause as the code moves across the Vision's face. Steve has a point, and there's no denying that. If he needed proof that the constant arrivals and departures here hurt, all he'd need to do is take a glance at his old Windrose memories - here's Misty, who had been so compassionate she worked with him to release the ship's vermin safely on planets rather than exterminating them, dead back home; here's Wrath, staring him down and telling him he should get his head out of his ass and be the kind and generous person she knows he is, with a memory like Swiss cheese and a world on the brink of destruction for no better reason than corporate greed; here's Makie, still here but vanished and returned twice now, regaining her deadly disease with each trip home and forced to know that a cure will be found long after her death.

But on the other hand, the Vision has never lost his idealism. And if there's one other Avenger who might understand, it's Steve Rogers. He speaks quietly.

"I would rather live my life to its fullest, knowing the joy is fleeting and there will be sadness, than to shut myself off from both pain and joy and by doing so not live at all. Beauty in transience is no less worthy than that which endures. If pain is the price I must pay for that, I do so gladly."

He understands. If anyone would understand, it would be Steve. But that doesn't mend up the hollow feeling inside his chest and the danger he feels acutely about getting too close to anyone here. He wouldn't remember any of them. Wouldn't even remember being happy or any of the things he learned from these varied lives he's coming into contact with. How did everyone here manage that?

"There won't be sadness," he can't help but underline. "There won't be anything. It will just. It will be as though it never happened at all." His mind drifts to Bucky, not for any other reason than the fact that he highlights Steve's point perfectly.

"I was here before. With Peggy. I don't remember anything of that. I don't know what we talked about or what we did together. I have no idea if the pain I am feeling now about that is worth it and I never will. It's not real anymore. Not to me..."

"There will always be sadness, Captain Rogers. It is part of being alive." At home he would have said the human condition, but there are so many others here besides himself that are not human but still live their lives fully, he cannot justify using the phrase.

Though with that admission, he steps fully out of the code, shedding bits of yellow data and appearing finally as himself in the familiar Avengers uniform. He smiles at Steve, though there's sadness in his eyes, and grips him firmly on the shoulder. (He's not sure what kind of reception a hug would get, so he holds off on that. It's easier with the women of his acquaintance, weirdly enough.)

"I want you to know my perspective on this." He's still not sure if the Calibration rooms are random or not, but he suspects not. And if the Atroma is going to send him his friends, he's sure as hell going to tell it like it is. "As you see around you, my consciousness is linked inextricably to the object called the Mind Stone. While I'm still learning what this means after a lifetime of it, one thing I have come to respect to a great degree is the sanctity of memory. Our memories inform our actions, our decisions, and our emotions. They give us emotional context for our experiences; in effect, they define us."

Behind him flash pictures of Bucky and Wrath.

"Those who tamper with and erase memories are unforgivable to me. I will do everything in my power to fight against those forces." And he smiles almost viciously, eyes hardening in a way that Steve has probably never seen before. "That includes, within the limitations we are forced into, working against our hosts. I don't agree with their methods or stated motivations; I despise their seemingly absolute control over our lives. Every sapient being deserves better."

He's never seen Vision look like this, but Steve likes it. There is something almost comforting to have someone else as furious as he is. As offended as he is over the pain his friends have experienced at the hands of others. Steve doesn't smile back but he is stern and grateful all the same as he listens. At the end of it, he finally nods, as though accepting some offer that had been extended.

"You have my support with that. The people who think that they can use people this way... Manipulate them by taking away the memories that make them who they are... I will fight with you as much as you need me to. It is one of the cruelest things one can do. They can't get away with it."

In turn, the Vision seems to relax when Steve pledges his support. They certainly haven't always agreed on things in the past, but when it's been important, the Avengers have come together. This isn't an instant threat to the wellbeing of everyone on board, but it's still important. And if it means they can't solve a problem by punching it, well, that's what they have brains for, right?

He doesn't bother saying it won't be easy because really, when is anything easy?

"It may be incremental and slow, and will certainly be frustrating. But if anything can be done, I believe in our ability to do it. Thank you, Captain."

"The things in life that are important never come fast and they never come easy. But that's not gonna scare me off..." Steve gets a fierce look in his eyes as he says that. The look of someone who's had that lesson drilled into his head since the moment he was born.

"We're going to figure it out, Vision. And we're going to take back our freedom. There's just no other option for people like us."

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unbearablynaive - 2019-02-20 21:56 (UTC) - Expand

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