open post (steve rogers)

[assembles]

steve rogers / captain america open post.

※ looking for a thread with an all-american super soldier?
※ respond with any character, canonmate or otherwise, and a prompt.
※ open to any format (prose, brackets, commentspam).
※ open to any canonpoint (within marvel cinematic universe).
※ if you don't have any prompt ideas, feel free to throw the ball into my court!
※ you can always refer to the random scenario meme for inspiration.

Comments

[ahousedivided]

[ "War is Hell," said Sherman. Little known fact: the unedited version of that speech elaborated with, "War is Hell, and if you ever want a glimpse into Hell, all you have to do is witness the depths of Alfred's obsessions."

Steve is about to get a taste of that. The news has broke that he'd been thawed, and while he is none too happy about all the damage to New York, he easily forgives the ragtag group of champions. (Besides, the handsome time traveling alien does way worse damage to England on a regular basis as well as the rest of the world. In the grand scheme of things, a few shattered sky scrapers isn't as bad as the time the Statue of Liberty moved.)

Now that things have calmed down it is finally time for America to realize his quest. It is time to face his destiny. Never again will Steve have to ride a train alone while staring wistfully out the window; now America will be there to breathe all over him.

First he has to find the guy. Luckily there's an app for that. No, seriously, he has an app where people report Avengers sightings and he is on the hunt. If he can catch a shiny Braviary he can find Captain America.

Armed with his Captain America t-shirt, an Avengers backpack made for elementary school kids, his usual bomber jacket and fifteen pictures of Speedwagon to pay for hotdogs if he gets hungry, he trudges through Central Park.

He has not figured out how the fuck he's going to greet the guy except with heavy breathing. ]

[assembles]

[New York is still in the process of being put back together, and Steve has to admit, it's not easy knowing that he's responsible for this city being in complete shambles. It'd been necessary, he realizes that, and yet this had once been home. Maybe it still is, he's not decided on that yet, but the fact still remains that it's partly his fault.

All part of being Captain America, right?

As it turns out, there's another part of being Captain America that Steve wishes he could somehow turn off. It's the fact that wherever he goes, he's recognized. It makes it difficult to actually experience the city and relearn it with seventy years added, seeing how there's a chance he'll be mobbed around every corner.

The incident with Loki and the Chitauri only made things worse, since his mug had been plastered all across the news, and so Steve has to take drastic measures -- large sunglasses, hoodies, and baseball caps -- if he ever wants to venture outside of SHIELD HQ.

Today, he decided to be truly bold and take a trip into Central Park. He'd been stopped a few times on his walk to one of the ponds, but now that he's settled in front of it and watching some ducks, everyone's decided to leave him be.

Finally, some peace and quiet...]

hope steve doesn't mind Peggy showing up in his apartment via time-slip magic funtimes

[rightfootforward]

This wasn't how the operation was supposed to go. She was meant to go in, grab the case and leave. It was a simple op, something she'd done a hundred times before and yet this time the intel had been bad, there had been no case, and now she was in a mad dash across the city, dodging bullets and trying to lose the tail firing a semi-automatic weapon through her back window.

And apparently now her rear left tire. "Bloody hell!"

Peggy jerked the wheel to the side, skidding to a stop up against a building. Broken glass flew around her as the passenger window imploded upon impact, it cut her arm as she raised it to shield her eyes, weapon already raised and firing out of the cracked windshield as she kicked the door open to exit. A spray of bullets greeted her as she ran behind the car for cover and, for just a moment, she had time to appraise the situation.

Door to her left - wooden, flimsy lock. Not the best place to be, but it would be enough. She moved quickly and kicked the door open, darting inside. It wasn't long before she had a table up against the door and she was ducked down behind cover, counting her ammunition. Lord, since re-joining the SSR and helping Howard out with his new little project, things had been absolutely insane. Peggy took the brief moment before she knew the door would open to steady her nerves... but nothing happened.

The door didn't get riddled with holes, it wasn't kicked open and she wasn't fighting for her life. Actually, it was noisy, but it wasn't gunfire noisy. It just sounded like cars - loud cars, too many to possibly be on the road - and people talking and walking by. When she checked over the edge of the sofa, she saw not the abandoned building she'd just kicked in, but a living room. A regular living quarters complete with lights and none of the bullet holes. She couldn't even hear the men who had been chasing her moments before.

Peggy stood, dumbfounded at the sudden change in scenery, bits of glass falling from her hair at the moment. "...Oh please don't tell me this is the afterlife."

OF COURSE HE DOESN'T

[assembles]

Steve's apartment was well-fortified. It had to be, all kinds of security put into place because SHIELD insisted it be that way. Which meant that as Steve washed up in the bathroom, he had to be imaging things if he thought he'd heard a voice in the other room.

Someone breaking in would have set off who knows how many alarms. Overkill, if you asked him, but it wasn't a point he'd been able to argue. Fury should have realized that if someone was reckless enough to actually break into Steve's apartment, he'd be able to handle it.

Then again, could he really say that when aliens were a staple in his life now? So many things had changed, and that was reason enough to be wary.

Steve paused at the bathroom door, listening for a moment. He heard footsteps, which confirmed that his senses hadn't been playing tricks on him earlier. (And honestly, when would something like that actually happen to a super soldier?)

He drew in a breath and then threw the door open, moving out into the living room. He expected a lot of things, like an Asgardian or some alien species he wouldn't recognize. He wouldn't have been too shocked to see a SHIELD agent, or Tony Stark, or any of the other Avengers (most of them were smart enough that they probably could have snuck their way in here).

But what he couldn't have expected, not even for a second, was a ghost from his past. Steve had seen in her in his dreams plenty of times, but he wasn't dreaming right now and that meant that all he could do was stare.

It was a trick, it had to be, but for a moment he was too baffled by seeing that face again to do anything.

[tightsofmight]

Peter stared down. Sweat gathered under his mask, outlining the slope of his forehead. He swallowed thickly, and hoped to god it was inaudible.

Okay.

No panicking.

No panicking, this was all L.L. Cool J. (Who wasn't cool himself so that was a terrible reference to make and was not helping even slightly.) He twiddled. He shuffled.

He had no hope left.

Peter put down his cards. And then delicately placed his head next to it, eyes to the table and arms folding over to block out all the light. The shame was great and burdensome.

A one pair. Of twos. After betting his sweet, sweet Bugle bonus and the extra money Aunt May had lent him for sweet, sweet nourishment while she was out getting her nails done with gal pals in Saratoga Springs. Somewhere, surely, Abba's The Winner Takes it All was playing in memoriam of the legendary winning streak that had just gone down in flames around him.

This was a dark day for Spider-man.

[assembles]

Had it not been for the fact that Spider-man here had practically begged his way into this friendly game of poker, maybe it wouldn't have turned out like this. They shouldn't have been betting money in the first place, but it did make it a little more interesting, and so here was the result.

Even with the mask on, the slump of Spidey's shoulders was impossible to mistake. This kid thought his life was over because he'd lost a game of cards to people much older than him.

Steve and Bucky had been offered plenty of time to practice this kind of thing during the long nights of the war, and so falling back into a game together was like second nature. Barton was also more than capable of holding his own.

Now that push came to shove, Steve felt bad, but the game had to end and so he set down his own hand: a pair of Kings. There was no question who won here, although he looked a little pained as he leaned forward and dragged the chips across the table toward him.

"Don't sweat it," he said with a wry smile. "You did pretty well for your first try."

[theburn]

It had all gone wrong, so wrong.

He'd regained consciousness in the Dome, head pounding from where Walker had knocked him out and there had been silence. No Day of Glory, no Soleil. Not even... he could have dealt with her being set back a little, just enough time to sort out those disconcerting glitches, the daddy issues and child's anger. But now she was gone. Gone altogether maybe.

He'd never felt so lost before.

Getting out of the dome was easy enough. The drugs didn't wear off overnight, the conditioning didn't just vanish and the place was in chaos. Easy to slip off, to appropriate supplies and talk his way around anyone who might have tried to stop him. They were mercifully few and all of them still waiting for the Day of Glory and for Soleil to release them from the failings and petty concerns of humanity.

There was a safe house outside London, one he'd used when coordinating the drugging of the stand pipes. Had enough stuff to keep him going and no-one else knew about it. He had supplies there; food, a generator and more importantly, several IDs Soleil had set up for him, just in case. She'd set them up so they were pretty much fool proof.

He holed up there for a few days while things calmed down, returning to normal as much as was possible considering how things had gone. They even got the electricity started up again in some places, with help from other countries sending in people and supplies.

He eventually had to head out though. Worth checking out the lie of the land. It was an easy walk into London proper, especially after the months of walking to Edinburgh and down the UK. Things were actually starting to look like they had before the EMP. Rebuilding, newspapers and communal broadcasts explaining what had happened.

It made him feel sick to watch it. Angry. They were all celebrating and pulling together but in a month? In a year? Oh yes, they'd be back to their old ways and wishing they had someone with Soleil's vision to guide them.

Idiots.

[assembles]

It had been a month since SHIELD had dissolved, and the whole country was still struggling to get back to its feet. Steve wasn't as involved in it as he might have been under different circumstances. He knew that people were looking for someone to guide them, for a person that they could band together under, but he couldn't be that guy right now.

He had something else he had to do first. Anything else he did with himself, it wouldn't mean much until he'd found Bucky.

He'd read the file by now, had obsessed over each page and soaked in the information to the point that he could probably recite back some of the lines word-for-word. All it proved to him was how difficult Bucky would be to track. He'd learned to live in the shadows. He'd know how to cover his tracks.

Which was why this was the first real lead Steve had found. Things were fishy in the UK, some cult-like group having made an attempt to make the masses compliant so that they could take over. It had the smell of Hydra all over it, even if this group went by a different name. The name didn't particularly matter. It could still have its roots in Hydra, and Steve got the feeling that wherever Hydra was, Bucky might go.

He probably wanted his revenge too, even if he didn't quite understand all the reasoning for it yet.

Steve was on foreign soil and so he had to take care with who noticed him. He was undercover yet again, but at least he'd learned a thing or two from Natasha now. The first thing he needed to do was get a lay of the land, see if he couldn't find any leads within the city itself. Mainly, he wanted to know if anyone had seen someone running around with a metal arm...

[antiqued]

Darcy spent an hour trying to explain Instagram to me.

[assembles]

So are you an expert now?

good old fashioned lover boy

[howitis]

[assembles]

[Steve's gotten very used to staying in motels over the past couple of weeks. While he'd been well-funded after SHIELD broke him out of the ice, after everything that happened with the organization's fall, all of Steve's accounts had been frozen. That means that his search for Bucky has had to be carried out on a budget, as Sam's had to pay for everything.

Steve's kept track of every payment so that he can reimburse Sam the moment that he has access to his money again. Sam's already done so much for him, and now he's subsidizing Steve's wild goose chase. Steve can't say he has any idea what he did to deserve such generosity, but he's pretty sure he thanks Sam at least twice a day.

He's also pretty sure that Sam's getting sick of it, but that won't stop him.

This particular motel happens to have only a few rooms to choose from, and the only one available was a single. Given that they've reached the part of the country where there are long stretches of open road and only a few places scattered in between, they don't have the luxury of finding a different place. Steve doesn't mind if they have to share a bed -- he used to have to huddle up with his fellow soldiers in trenches during the war, and no doubt Sam has too.

He tries to be casual about the whole thing, he really does. They order in some pizza which is mediocre at best and watch a movie on the grainy TV which is so bad it's laughable, and the entire thing is so natural. Even though they're currently trying to find his best friend who's been tortured and brainwashed for the past seventy years, there's something in this moment that feels so effortless.

Steve kind of feels guilty about that, but he tries to focus on Natasha's words. About how he needed practice, about how finding a nice girl would help him unwind a little. All those names run through Steve's head, but there's something she missed.

They're laid out side-by-side on top of the bed, and with the movie credits rolling, Steve can turn his gaze to Sam instead. He stares at his lips and just wonders for a moment, if it would be okay.]

Here we go, hope this is okay.

[bondorblood]

let me know if i need to change anything!!

[assembles]

[It probably figures, that it's on the one trip Steve takes without the intention of finding anything, that he actually succeeds at it.

Whenever he's revved his bike up lately, it's been for one specific reason, and that's to track down Bucky. Not that it's a particularly useful method to just drive around and hope for the best, but Steve finds that he can't rest easy unless he's at least trying, and without much information to go on, he has no other way to work off all of that nervous energy.

Sam keeps telling him that he's become obsessed, that he needs to find other ways to make use of his time, that he's only making things worse by never allowing himself to think about anything else. But how can Steve do that when he knows that Bucky's out there and probably needs his help, whether he'll admit that or not?

After yet another fruitless day of searching, Steve decides to take Sam's advice and just forget about it all for a while. Just drive as fast as he can, and blank his mind and worry about nothing more than the next turn ahead of him and the wind whipping through his hair. It's late, he's in a relatively remote area, and so he doesn't worry too much about who might see him or what they might think of it.

The media still wants to know what's going on with Captain America after his fall into the Potomac, but he just can't. He can't right now.

When he catches sight of the hitchhiker, Steve doesn't think much of it at first. It's a pretty rare thing these days, people don't trust one another enough to risk that kind of thing, and he's about to speed right past the guy, but...

There's something about his stance, the jut of his thumb and the way that his cap's tilted slightly on his head. Steve screeches to a stop and lets the bike settle about ten feet away from the stranger. If his instincts are wrong, this is going to get awkward pretty quick, but Steve doesn't think he is.

He stays seated on the bike, but tilts his head to the side slightly, squinting.]

... Bucky?

filth all of this is filth

[antiqued]

how long until your meeting is over?

just how i like it

[assembles]

Another hour or two, probably. Why?

[dreor]

[ the clock on his phone tells him it's nearly four in the morning, while simultaneously blinding him with the screen when it startles him awake with his ringtone - he hasn't figured out custom ones yet, but the high pitched bing-bing! sure does the trick. it's still in his hand, and he's still curled up on the floor in the aforementioned blanket tent, a few large marshmallows scattered about the mess of blankets and sheets he's nestled into. why do they make phone screens so damn bright?

Natasha left several hours ago, after checking in on him in Steve's absence and thus challenging him to marshmallow towers in the blanket tent he'd spent the better half of his evening alone setting up. they had watched a couple television shows, had a couple drinks, and then he'd started talking to Steve out on his mission. she must've noticed his mood change a bit, and after insisting on the whole sleep thing as well (for the both of them - she's had her own share of sleepless nights and plenty of stress lately,) she'd taken off for ... wherever it is she stays. he's not sure. she tends to just pop out from nowhere when she feels like it. but it was nice of her to draw one of the blankets up over him before she left.

point is, bright screen, grumbling happens, but the caller ID says it's Steve so Bucky brings the phone to his ear, after only a little difficulty finding the answer button in his half awake state. ]

Hey.

[ technically, since Steve said to get some sleep until he calls, he can't be mad at him. ]

[assembles]

[For all the time that Steve and Tony had spent waiting around for something to happen, once the suspected HYDRA member had left the lab they'd been staked out in front of, it had been simple enough to apprehend him. Apparently the combined might of Captain America and Iron Man was more than enough to earn a confession.

Without SHIELD, all they could do was get the man put behind bars, and while it doesn't feel entirely satisfactory, Steve still considers it a job well done. He and Stark part and after changing, Steve takes off on his bike and swings by a grocery store that he happens to know is twenty-four hours in order to pick up some ingredients for pancakes.

The people who work here know him by now, and so while they might still get that excited look in their eye whenever he shows up, they're polite. Steve's in and out in a matter of minutes, so he places the call in to Bucky as he walks back to his bike.

The moment Bucky answers, Steve can tell that he'd actually been asleep, and he almost wishes he hadn't called. Bucky doesn't always have the easiest time sleeping these days, so he hates to know he interrupted.

On the other hand, it's important to acknowledge Bucky's wishes too.]

Hey. Glad you see you got some beauty rest. I'm on my way back now, everything went off without a hitch.

[mindbend]

[assembles]

The new Avengers facility is an impressive structure, packed with training rooms all specified to the new members of their team. Sam and Rhodes are more likely to take to the skies overhead for their practice, but then again, it's been organized that all of the airspace in a five mile radius around them remains clear of any commercial aircrafts.

Each member requires a different kind of training, but most important is that they all learn how to work together, complementing their different skillsets instead of getting in each other's way. Group training sessions are more common than one-on-one lessons for that reason. The first iteration of the Avengers hadn't really had the chance to train together like this, instead learning the hard way during their first battle together and then their search for the scepter later on.

Steve's glad for the opportunity. It keeps him busy. It keeps him from thinking about the parts of his life that still don't fit together, or the opportunities that he's had to accept he'll never have. He's a good leader, that much he can say about himself now without shying away from the words, and focusing on his new team has proved to be a good distraction.

He and Sam ran out of leads for Bucky's whereabouts months ago. Both of them still keep an eye out, but every HYDRA base they know of has been searched and they've found nothing. Bucky isn't ready to see him again. Maybe he never will be. Steve can only hope that he's still alive out there somewhere, that he isn't hurt or captured or out of his mind with the guilt of what he'd been made to do.

The thing is, he knows what it's like, to know that the person closest to you in all the world is gone. He'd thought Bucky was dead for over a year before learning the truth (which is in some ways worse), and so he has a modicum of an idea of what Wanda is dealing with. Except that Pietro had been here twin, they'd only had each other since childhood, and there's a kind of bond there that even Steve's friendship with Bucky can't match.

She doesn't usually let it show, especially not during training, but sometimes the anger and grief can be seen in the red waves of her power that she lets out to devastating effect. Wanda has an impressive amount of control, she's never hurt anyone she didn't mean to, but Steve has noticed the way she behaves outside of their work.

Like now. She's standing in the center of a crowded room, the lobby of their training facility, and yet it's like she isn't there at all. She's not present. She barely notices the people who walk around her, and while she's staring forward, Steve doubts that she's looking at anything in particular. Kind of like Natasha and the wall. All of them are carrying their wounds and dealing with them in their own ways, but as team leader it's Steve's job to make sure that everyone is holding up well enough that they'll be able to stand and fight when the next disaster hits.

He steps up to Wanda, dipping his head down to meet her eyes. It's been raining for the past few days, and Steve focuses on the sound of the water hitting the roof instead of the hustle and bustle around them.

"Earth to Wanda." He says it kindly, taking a look around them before he moves a step closer. "You wanna move somewhere quieter?" It occurs to him, that she can see into the minds of everyone around them. That's got to get exhausting after a while, even if she is able to control it or turn it off.

[ably]

[ Very few memories remain from since she was captured. The ones from before only stay because Peggy clings desperately to them, fighting and resisting every drug, every treatment, every attempt to wipe her mind clean. And they've tried-- time and time again, she is tortured until her body is too tired to fight back, and she drifts from one day to the next, barely managing to struggle the people trying to turn her into a monster.

But not her mind; they won't take that. She gives in until she is tired, weak and defeated, nothing of the woman she used to be - or so she has them think. The first opportunity she gets, she runs.

And she runs and runs until she finds some way out, because the first opportunity will be her only opportunity, and she knows that. Those memories, the memories of running, those are the ones that don't linger. She's fighting her way out because her life depends on it, and she finds a plane. She can't even remember how to fly a plane - can she fly a plane? It doesn't matter. It's her only way out of there, and she barely manages to get it off the ground, but suddenly she's flying high above mountains and cities and water--

The water. There was water then too, she remembers, a promise of a dance and then her life ended. I got to put her in the water.

She doesn't know why she does it, or how. The nose of the plane aims down and dives right into the water. It's dark and it's cold, getting colder still. She made it. Maybe she made it nowhere at all but she made it out of there at least.

She closes her eyes, exhales one last time.

Cold light hits her face, and she opens them again. There's nothing but a white blur at first - must be the afterlife, she thinks. But the afterlife takes the form of white sheets and covers resting over her body dressed in a plain hospital gown, a small nightstand next to the bed, and white plain walls, no windows. She blinks her eyes again, and the place starts to look less like death, and more like a prison.

Stumbling onto her feet, she gets up, hands tracing the bed and the walls, panic settling heavily in her chest, nearly crushing her. Her heart's going up to her throat like bile when she finds the door - no handle, just a keyhole - but while her mind tells her there's no way out, her body's working of its own accord already. She shoves a fist through the wood and punches a hole, tearing the door out of the frame. Outside, two armed men stand guard. Easy to fight her way past them, the motions coming to her with no thought whatsoever.

She takes one of their guns, and runs.

Everything looks so strange to her. The agents all dress in odd attire, holding weapons with the weirdest design, and it's only when she glances down to her own hands that she realises she's never seen a gun like this one before. It doesn't matter, though. You point, you shoot, right? So long as she knows how to put her finger on the trigger, she knows how to use it.

But very few bullets are actually fired. Whether it's the fact she catches them by surprise, or that she is much stronger and faster than any of them are, she manages to fight her way through the people popping up. She is lost, confused, her mind a haze, she doesn't start to see agents organising themselves into a pursuit instead of her running towards them herself. Before she is aware of it, she's the one running down the hallways, a group of agents giving chase as she takes every turn with her heart clenched, hoping that the next one will lead her to a door, and not to a gun aimed between her eyes. ]

[assembles]

[ A few weeks after Steve woke up in 2012, he'd learned what happened to Peggy Carter.

Furious as he had been at the time, he could actually understand why they'd kept it from his at first. He'd had so much to process already, so many swirling thoughts to sort through, that adding one more thing to it might have been the final straw that had broken even his back, a back that's supposed to handle any weight.

It seemed like a cruel joke at first. Steve had buried the Valkyrie in the ice for the express purpose of wiping Hydra off the map, and yet they'd gotten a hold of Peggy anyway. Peggy, who had in some way always seemed invincible to him, like the fires of war couldn't touch her, like she could brush it all off with a confident, red-lipped smile. How could she have fallen prey to the same fate?

On his darker days, he'd wonder if she had been trying to follow him into that icy abyss, or maybe that she'd even dreamed of getting him back.

As it turns out, he's the one who ends up searching for her. In between his duties as an Avenger, Steve had done everything he could to try and find the crash site. SHIELD tells him they'd already looked, but he doesn't believe them. Or rather, he doesn't believe that they'd looked hard enough.

When they do finally find the crashed plane, extract her body, and discover that she's (somehow) survived by the same process that Steve did, he's nothing but a bundle of nerves. It takes five SHIELD agents to keep him in the waiting area while they warm her up and bring her out of the cryo-induced coma, and Steve can't stay still, pacing around the room like a worried family member waiting for their loved one to come out of surgery.

In a way, that's kind of what it is. All he wants is to see her face again, hear her voice again, be a familiar face to explain what happened and assure her that everything will be okay.

And of course, they should have listened to him, because the next news that comes down the line is that Peggy's escaped her room and is raising hell. Of course she is. Steve can't help but feel an odd sense of pride, even as he pushes past the agents, unwilling to play nice any more, in order to find her. She's going to need someone to ground her, to calm her down, and he's pretty sure he's the right person for that job.

Steve races down the hall in the direction of the medical ward, dodging other agents who are mainly running the opposite way. He hears thundering footsteps, along with the slap of bare feet against the tile flooring, and as he rounds a corner, there she is.

Peggy makes quite a sight, running toward him in a hospital gown with a machine gun in her arms. Steve skids to a stop and raises both hands up, realizing that she might not register who he is or what's going on at first. None of this is going to make any sense to her, not when she's got no context. ]

Peggy. It's all right, you can stop. It's me.

[ He cracks a smile at her, hoping beyond hope that he gets through. ]

[heilt]

blends timelines w/e w/e

[assembles]

[ When at least two superpowers have governments on the lookout for you, the only way not to get captured is by taking the roads less traveled. It probably shouldn't surprise Steve that the Avengers would fall out of favor just the same way that Overwatch did. How much of it is his fault and how much of it was simply the organization buckling under its own weight, he can't say. But he's been going it alone ever since Bucky opted to go back into cryostasis, and it feels like he's only ever a few steps ahead of Ross and the UN.

Suffice to say that he feels completely out of place here in the countryside, surrounded by lush green landscapes and quaint scenery. Steve has a hard time not looking over his shoulder every few seconds, but Natasha taught him better than that. Maybe. Now it's a matter of survival, so he's doing his best to play it cool.

He'll need to find somewhere to stay in the Swiss village nearby, and so Steve makes his way from where he parked his car on a back road toward the small town. On his way he passes a pond, where he spots a woman crouched down and taking photos of some swans with her camera.

Not wanting to draw any attention to himself, he skirts around her, leaving her to her hobby without speaking a word. Hopefully she won't find it strange that he's wandering around here. ]

[longaevus]

( the note had been pushed under his door, with helen gone hours before steve would have gotten home. all it had on it was a location and a time, and a symbol that steve wouldn't have seen since the war. she'd left similar notes for him back then, but that had been decades before.

helen had left before he'd gone under, her mission taking her on a slightly different (if very entwined) path. but she'd heard the news, and had mourned the loss of a great man. hearing about him again, actually catching sight of him as she'd been in new york-- )

I'd heard that you were dead.

( helen doesn't speak until she hears his footsteps, her own presence concealed by the shadows of the warehouse. she should be dead too, by all accounts, yet there they both are, and neither aged a day. she hadn't quite shared the nature of her own gift with him, either )

[assembles]

[ For Steve, the war really hadn't been so long ago. As soon as he sees the symbol, he remembers it, but that's also enough to make him suspicious. He and Helen had used this symbol during their correspondences, but if she's still alive, it seems unlikely that she would be in any kind of shape to reach out to him.

So he assumes that it's a trap. He has no idea how anyone in the current day would have learned of the symbol, but with abilities like mind-reading in the mix these days, he has to be ready for anything.

He isn't in full uniform when he goes to the noted meeting spot, but he does bring his shield with him, and he's braced for a fight.

As soon as he hears that familiar voice, he goes tense, eyes widening when she appears from the shadows of the abandoned warehouse. Every sound in here echoes, and he doesn't like it. ]

Helen...? But you...

[ She hasn't aged a day. Is this some sort of shapeshifter? Or something similar to Loki's illusions? Steve keeps his distance, waiting for the moment when she lunges at him. ]

[purrsonage]

[ The dust settles, and the world turns. Yesterday's enmities are today's scars, differences are fissures that are meant to be bridged, and found family is something to be treasured; if there's one thing that recent events have re-taught T'Challa, it's the simple adage of 'staying in touch'. Of strength in outreach.

In other words, Steve's return visit to Wakanda is well-timed.

Steve arrives along the border on a rare rainy day, where precipitation filters down from scattered clouds— almost like an afterthought— against a backdrop of an otherwise clear sky. Droplets of water weigh down the tips of tall grass, making them bend in what T'Challa perceives to be something near-performative; he has half an inclination to chide them on their forced reverence, even. No, neither him nor Captain Rogers needs them to bow, thank you very much.

He doesn't quite smile when he steps towards Steve (alone and unimpeded, which he prefers), but he warms. A handshake would be too formal, he thinks, so he offers to take one of his companion's travel bags instead. ]

The weather will clear shortly.

[ And yes, Bucky is alright. He says as much with the brief once-over he spares for his visitor, and the faint uptick of his lips.

(he wonders— if Erik Stevens had stayed N'Jadaka, if his father hadn't razed the path that could have bound them together in family and solidarity, would he and his cousin have been like Captain Rogers and Sergeant Barnes? always enduring, despite everything?

it's pointless to speculate, but T'Challa has nothing but respect for these hypothetical bonds.) ]

You look well. [ 'For someone who's going to have to stay under the radar for the next few months'. ]

[assembles]

[ There's a certain sense of pressure, knowing that T'challa has come personally to greet him. The two of them had come to an understanding in the aftermath of all the chaos, after everything that happened in Siberia, and Steve doesn't think there's any way he can repay the king for his kindness.

Bucky had not played any part in T'chaka's death, but he had killed other fathers, other mothers, while under Hydra's control. There are some who would look at a person like that and see a lost cause, but instead T'challa had agreed to help.

Steve's got a hood pulled halfway over his head, but he barely seems to notice the rain. (He remembers running around Brooklyn, his clothes soaked, because he'd either been too stupid or too poor to buy an umbrella. He remembers the vicious colds he'd catch after, and how Bucky chided him, worry clear in his features, as he did his best to help him recover.) When T'challa reaches for one of his bags, Steve pauses for a moment, but ultimately hands it over. It would be rude to refuse, and he's still trying to figure out how to conduct himself around royalty.

At T'challa's reassurance about the weather, Steve shakes his head and waves him off. He really doesn't mind it. With all the hiding he's been doing, it feels somehow comforting to have the world around him doused in water like this, like another layer of cover. He knows that he's safe within Wakanda, and in fact, he's already looking forward to seeing the metropolis again. That moment when trees and grass give way to a lively city the likes of which he never could have imagined won't get old, no matter how many times he ends up visiting this place.

He looks well, apparently. Maybe T'challa is saying that as a kindness; Steve's been growing a beard, and he's not sure how he feels about it, necessary though it may be. ] Glad to hear it. [ If he's passing as halfway functional after the mess of the past few months, he'll take it. ] How have things been on your end?

[ It's not like any news has traveled out of Wakanda, not when most of the world doesn't even know it exists. ]

handwaving a bit of catching up prior to this

[thunders]

I go away for a few years and you just find yourself some other prince to hang out with? Is that how it is, Steve? After all we've been through together? After I let you fondle my hammer?

[assembles]

Actually, he's a king now.

[lockedaway]

( it's been some time since they've worked together, their respective problems being contained in their own cities, with some strained relationships across the teams, but this is one problem that jean can't sort out alone.

she'd been investigating an anomaly for the professor, ready to head back when the source of it turned out to be absolutely nothing. at least that was until everything started going wrong. her contact was cut off, and when they'd shown up in her hotel room--

jean had been able to feel the power radiating from them, having only a moment to try and defend herself before they attacked. it didn't work and when jean came too they were gone. clearly they didn't like the attention but at least she knew that the professor had been right. something was there and its power scared her.

stark tower was easy to find. until she'd gotten there jean had no idea if steve would even be there. thankfully he was. rather than going up she waited downstairs in the lobby, instead sending a telepathic message to him )

( Steve? I need your help. )

[assembles]

[ Maybe it's serendipity, or maybe it's just good luck that Steve happens to be in Stark Tower when Jean comes by. There are facilities and amenities here for him to use, all of it so generously provided by Tony for each and every Avenger. That doesn't mean that he's here all the time, though. Steve's always preferred to have his own space.

They're debriefing a recent mission, though, something minor but still enough to have brought Steve over. He doesn't usually skip out on Avengers business if he's in town, especially since so many of them are scattered to other parts of the world.

He's in the middle of a meeting with Hill and a few other SHIELD agents when the "call" comes through. A mental transmission like this is still pretty unexpected for him; no one else on his team is a telepath. Jean wouldn't do this lightly, though, and so he mentally responds as best as he can. It's taken some practice. ]

( Jean? Are you nearby? )

[ There's a range on this, right? ]

[wingedman]

[Being on the run, Sam thinks, is a lot like being in the Air Force. It sounds exciting, but when it comes down to it, it's a whole lot of sitting around and doing nothing while living out of what you have squeezed into a duffel bag. The food's better, and it's arguably safer (not that Sam's keen on revisiting the Raft anytime soon), but this still isn't how he imagined a European vacation.

(And, no, he's not suggesting that they visit Disneyland Paris. Nat would probably kill them if they went somewhere with that many cameras.)

It's raining one night in Belgium, a miserable pounding rain that keeps both of them in the room and Sam flipping through the TV channels to try and find anything interesting. Half of it's in French, the other half is in German, and he just wants a sport that isn't soccer, goddamnit. He gives up and tosses the remote on the nightstand between their beds, flopping back onto the mattress with a sigh.]

Next time I'm on the run from 107 governments, I'm bringing a goddamn book with me. Or maybe a deck of cards.

[He feels out of sorts, prickly - a combination of the weather, the circumstances, the simple fact that he misses the familiar. Sam doesn't regret his choices - he'd do it all over again in a heartbeat - but he's tired of being cooped up here, of their life in hiding. The tiny room feels increasingly stifling, and he misses his jetpack. He misses his family, whose communications are surely being monitored, so he can't even tell them he's safe. He hopes they know, somehow.]

You know, we even had an Xbox in Afghanistan. [And if there's one thing that sounds incredibly stupid the moment it leaves his mouth, it's pointing out the trivial hobbies they pursued in their downtime during a modern war to a guy from World War II. So, yeah, good job there, Wilson.]

'Least there's no sand here.

[assembles]

[ It's seeming more and more like Steve's never going to get to visit Europe just to go on vacation. It's always been for work, ever since he'd first shipped out for the front back in the 40's. Then again, this is a guy who's more or less allergic to taking time off, so it probably wouldn't have happened even if he hadn't ended up an enemy of the state.

Steve doesn't mind the television programs being in other languages. If anything, it helps him brush up on French and German and whatever else they might here depending on which country they're in on a given day. He was never fluent, but he'd had to know enough for a basic conversation back during the war. It would come in handy now, too.

Sam's having none of it, though, and it seems more like he wants to talk than anything else. Steve doesn't take issue with that, and if anything, he knows he needs to hear out every complaint, no matter how trivial it might seem. Sam is in this situation because of him. It had been Sam's choice, but Steve is still the one who precipitated it. ]

Not sure about an Xbox, but we could probably get our hands on some books and a deck of cards, at least.

[ Those are the sorts of things Steve had used to pass the downtime way back when. There'd also been a lot of sitting around smoking cigarettes (though he'd abstained) and shooting the shit, for lack of anything better to do. That, and cleaning their rifles almost obsessively. ]

Not tonight, though. [ He casts a glance from his position on his own twin bed toward the closest window. The downpour is audible, and he's pretty sure that's not just because of his super hearing. ] Might need to figure out another way to pass the time.

→ polarstare

[assembles]

( from here )

Sounds like you're just too chicken to take me up on the bet, Barnes.

[ Yep, the gloves are coming off. Already. ]

[polarstare]

easy there, rogers- I’M not the one who won’t even admit to stealing, here.

besides, what would i even get when i win this bet of yours? i’m already down a slice of pie.

[ “when,” ]

c: set post civil war??? vague hand gestures

[falcony]

[ sam's time on the raft hadn't been a pleasant one. aside from the fact it was a high scale underwater prison, it was what had led him there. what brought him to that point. of course, he wasn't there for all that long - not compared to his sentence. or even his expectations. but it was long enough for sam to think - about steve, about bucky barnes, about watching rhodey's body fall right out of the sky and not being fast enough to catch him. and of course, as it always did, there were moments of riley - who hadn't even been there - but who'd gone the same way. sky, gravity, and then dirt. the guilt of what happened and not knowing if he survived had pulled sam to the ground yet again. it had, in essence, gotten him in this cell. but just as he doesn't regret the side of the tarmac he'd been standing on, he doesn't regret grounding himself.

he'd seen the look in tony's face, when he sat on the other side of that glass wall and asked him for help. he'd known how he felt, seeing a complicated sort of guilt looking back at him. in the eyes of one of the most powerful men in the world. the same man who had driven them to those accords. who had told them to stop acting like children. who had said all that, done all that, to steve.

sam had told him where to go, all the same. and he doesn't regret that, either.

these are all things that come to him on darker nights like this. the faces. the choices. the steps he made that led him to this place. he goes over it like a mission report, each page, each decision. why he came to be where he is and what his reasoning was for it. sam chose to stay back home after his second tour to avoid these things, because he didn't want to take directions from faces he didn't know first hand. because there are things bigger than marching orders and political positioning.

he goes over it all again, and then again. checking and rechecking it every step of the way. if he would alter his steps. if there is any other choice he would make or any other place he would end up, if given the chance. if there was a second of that feeling, of that curling in his gut, of regret at the things he'd done.

sam thinks of steve's face on the other side of that glass. of knowing, somewhere back behind his ribs, that he would be there. no matter what it took, no matter how it had happened - sam's trust in that was as much a part of him as anything else.

sam never liked sitting still. he was never good at it. it's why he'd run off to the service as quickly as he could, why even when he came back home it was working at the VA, it was volunteer work down at the center, it was extra meetings and checking on other vets. when he made the decision to throw in his lot with steve and natasha that day in his kitchen, he had done it with an expectation that his life would be different. vastly different.

being told to lay low in a safe house in the french countryside? being asked to find something else to do while natasha worked her contacts and blended in? having to face the looks of both steve and nat when he asked what could he do and being met with silence? not exactly part of the image. but sam knows his strengths, knows when to accept defeat, and he stays behind. the house is moderately sized, frozen in the seventies or eighties or whenever it was last in service for nat's mysterious ways. it has a fully stocked bar and too worn mattresses and sam thinks maybe, just maybe, he might go crazy from boredom before any of the various governments that were - at presence - hunting him down could find any of them.

sam has no idea where any of them went. he's stopped asking after the third or fourth sympathetic smile. so sam walks the length of the house three, then four, then five times, before he ends up in the kitchen. there's barely anything in here, but maybe there's enough of something to make something, so sam sets up the little burner phone that he'd bribed nat to upload some music, turns on marvin gay, and gets to exploring the cabinets - needing his mind to go somewhere. anywhere. so he tries to put it to work. ]

i'm finally here

[assembles]

[ There's about ten different reasons for Steve to feel guilty about their current situation, and while that's not something that will ever leave him, he's already made all of his present company give him looks like they wanted to strangle him by bringing it up. They all made their choices, and they all insist that they knew what they were getting into. For Natasha, at least, Steve can believe that. For Sam and Wanda, not so much.

They hadn't asked for this. They hadn't signed up for this life in the same way. Steve will always owe them for their decision to stay at his side through thick and thin, to support him even when he was at his most stubborn. But owing them doesn't feel like enough, not when his actions got them locked up in arguably the most dangerous prison in the world. Not when they're now all on the run. Not when Sam can't even make contact with his own family to let them know he's all right, though Natasha's been working on a safe means of allowing it.

It's Natasha who's made the point that they only tell Sam and Wanda so much, for their own safety. Steve doesn't feel great about it, if he's honest. He's always believed in being forthcoming with his people, in making sure that they knew there was mutual trust, and the secrecy and the shadowy nature of what they're doing isn't his way at all. It's an adjustment.

For all of them, probably. If it weren't for Nat, Steve's not sure they would have made it this far, and that's the primary reason that he's trusting her judgment on all this, as much as it might get under his skin.

It doesn't help that Wanda keeps running off, especially when both Steve and Natasha have a guess for why. (Sam probably does too.) That's their current reason for striking out from the safehouse, to see if they can track her down. She somehow has managed to completely cover her tracks, though. Her rendezvouses with Vision are likely to get them all into serious trouble, and yet the trail keeps running cold.

Eventually Natasha decides that she needs to pursue the rest alone, and tells Steve to head back and check in on Sam. Which is what has him circling back to the safehouse. The scenery around it is breathtaking, pastoral and idyllic with green fields and thatched roofs, and he only wishes he could appreciate all of this is a little more. Just like the last time he was in Europe for an extended period of time, there isn't really much opportunity to stop and smell the roses.

While the house looks unassuming enough, it has a security system that should alert Sam to Steve's return. As he approaches the front door, a piece of the wall slides up and allows him to input a code to unlock it.

Once he steps inside, he hears something — music softly traveling from further in the house. He's got a pretty good guess for what it is, too.

Following the familiar sound of Marvin Gaye's voice, Steve calls out: ] Sam?