apocalypsehowcomm | Log: A (dusty) new arrival

Entry tags:

Log: A (dusty) new arrival

Who: Steve Rogers and OTA (including roomies in apartment B4)
When: March 14th-ish, upon arrival
Where: ADI and ADI housing
Summary: Steve arrives at ADI, bangs around in an air duct and collects lots of dust, then gets briefed and takes a look around, ultimately making it to his new living quarters
Warnings: None yet, will update/warn in threads if needed.

Arrival via air duct
Steve Rogers is not a complete stranger to suddenly finding himself in places he hadn't expected to be.

But it's always unsettling, and this time maybe even more so than any others. He'd been in Asgard one minute, and the next — Well. It's a good thing he doesn't have asthma anymore. Because wherever he is, it's dark, cramped, and full of dust.

He also feels… kind of like shit. Weak. Disoriented. Actually, a lot like the old asthma attacks, just with (fortunately) less gasping and choking. Okay, some minor gasping and choking. It's really dusty in here.

Where he'd normally just consider breaking through the damn side of the duct — because yeah, okay, this is an air duct, he's pretty sure — he both feels unsteady enough not to try and unsure enough of where he is that he… probably shouldn't? Not until he knows more. Which has him crawling forward, Mjolnir's strap looped around one wrist, until he spots a vent up ahead. Plan A, then: Kick it in and get the hell out of here. And hope for the best.

(Hope he fits through the vent, in the first place.)

Looking around, settling in
Steve Rogers is also not unaccustomed to the idea of preventing the apocalypse. What he is unaccustomed to is the idea that using any of the abilities the serum grants him requires terrorizing and murdering people. That's just —

Well. He's lived more of his life without superhuman abilities than not. He'll just… not use them, for now.

It is frustrating. He was in the middle of mission. It was, you know, kind of important. But he's still got the soul stone tucked safely away, even if his quantum suit seems to have disappeared (collapsed into the watch, he has to assume, but he can't reactivate it), and if he's needed here, then he supposes he can afford the pit stop. Technically, he's got all the time in the world. Right?

So, he decides to take a look around ADI, still in his dusty Captain America uniform as he walks the halls and pokes his head into offices, the gym, the canteen, and the library. He maybe pokes around for something to eat in the canteen (he's... very hungry) and then stops to study the local maps and directories in the library, committing them to memory.

He finally makes it to the apartments. By the time he shows up at the right door — B4 — he's at least wearing jeans and a hoodie, although his hair is a still bit dusty and there's still that hefty warhammer in one hand. He figures he might as well knock instead of just walking in. It might be his place, now, but it seems like a little politeness is the safer option when meeting potentially apocalypse-averting teammates.

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"No. It's good." He turns a corner, heading for the stairs up. "It's. She knows me. Sometimes better than I do. She went through a lot of shit. But she got free."

He frowns, mostly to himself, and adds, "It was weirder when Stephen Strange and Wanda Maximoff were here. They're gone now. They were from the same time you and Belova are, and they knew me." Steve he at least has some recollection of, even if the vast majority of that time was spent fighting him and then dragging him out of the river.

Steve watches the back of Winter's neck, thinking, So did you, pal. But he keeps it to himself, letting the other names Winter rattles off distract him.

"Were here," he repeats. "But not anymore?"

He's guessing it's not because they magically found some way out. Some way back. It doesn't seem like either of them, even given what little he knows of the former, to leave people.

"Sometimes people. Disappear. We don't know where they go or why. Maybe they just walk away, some of them." He can't see Wanda and Strange just walking away, either, though. Strange in particular had seemed pretty invested in all this. In Winter, even.

"Maybe they died, sacrificed to one of the Entities, and no one found a body," he guesses grimly. "Maybe they went home. We don't know. But we can't find them."

He doesn't like to think about it much. He doesn't miss Wanda and Strange, exactly... well, maybe a little... but if he thinks about it too much he starts to worry about Yelena and Kate and Meredith going missing. Which is decidedly worse. And now he has to worry about Steve, too.

Steve can't see either of them just walking away, either. Maybe they'd found some lead, some other option, and left for that. But if they did walk out of here, it wasn't just because they had decided not to help.

Of course, he can't deny that it might have been one of the other options, too. He's quiet a moment, processing that, nodding even if Winter can't see him.

"All right. I'll keep an eye out. Just in case." Of course, aside from Wanda and Strange - "Does it happen often? Should we have some kind of check-in?"

Ugh they probably should. And Steve won't have a phone or an apartment number yet, so all he can do is give his own. "Apartment C2. In the ADI complex. Knock any time after 9PM, I should be there. Once you have a phone for the ADI network, give me your number."

Oh, and also: "Don't assume the ADI network is secure. Or private. One of the Avatars has a phone that can access it. Unless that's been deactivated somehow. And the IT staff spies on us. We're pretty sure."

Steve nods, both taking that all in and agreeing to exchange information - once he has any to exchange.

Granted, it's not great hearing that the network isn't secure - in more than one way, Jesus, but hey - "Guess we'll just have to talk face to face, or write on paper. Like the good old days," he says, a little wryly.

Still, "If ADI is spying on you - us. That says... a lot, to me." About trust. And lack thereof. "And I don't like what it says."

"A lot of us are tied to Entities. A lot of us have powers. It's in their best interest to watch us and make sure we don't go too far," Winter shrugs. He's so used to being monitored it hadn't even occurred to him that they might not be, but he knows other people were upset about it. "If you tell them you have powers, they might tell you which one is yours."

He actually makes a face, nose wrinkled and brows together. "I told them I didn't. Have powers. So they didn't tell me. I had to figure it out on my own." He doesn't blame them, since it was his own fault, but it might have been nice for them to look a little closer.

"Do you think it was the right move?" Steve asks. "Not telling them, I mean." He's asking with the intention of someone genuinely looking for advice. Because this man is a man whose advice he trusts, implicitly, for better or worse. Whether he remembers Steve or not.

He really, really doesn't like the idea of being tied to an Entity, whatever it is. But that part he can worry about later, he supposes. There's only one chance to make a first impression. One chance to come clean or hold back.

"No. If I had told them. If I'd realized. I would have known sooner that there was an Entity, and it would be easier to not feed it." He's still so, so annoyed with himself for not understanding what was going on earlier.

He looks over his shoulder at Steve again, considering. "I didn't have someone telling me I had one from the start, though. I was one of the first. And I was." He stops and looks back ahead with a huff of air, not a sigh, something more frustrated. "I was too afraid to guess." And then he just got into his routine, his rut, and his comfortable circle of a team... and he never thought about it.

"Probably better to tell, though. ADI will probably figure it out anyway. And if you tell, you won't have to guess which one has you and how best to fight it."

Steve shakes his head a little, though Winter has already looked away again. "I wouldn't have trusted them," he admits, because he'll never know, now, but he doesn't think he would. Not with how it all sounds. So, "I'm just lucky I have you to tell it to me straight."

He thinks of Winter being here alone. Of being one of the first. Just another hardship in a long list of them, he guesses. Just another thing to be sorry for, when he can never fix it.

"All right," he decides, though, because the rest of what Winter says convinces him. "I'll tell them. See what they think." Because if knowing will help him fight it, whatever it is, then he would rather know. That is the smarter play. "I'll keep you in the loop."

"Good."

There's a silence of maybe two steps before Winter decides this is someone else who deserves to know, and continues, "Mine's the Stranger. Fear of the slightly not human. Of things not quite right. Of. Of losing yourself." Which Steve will probably get the implications of, if anyone besides Yelena (and Natasha, maybe; the other Widows) would get it. "I'm trying not to feed it anymore. Now that I know."

Steve doesn't stop walking, but he does reel a little at that. Not because it's such a foreign concept - it is, but his life has been full of foreign concepts, from waking up seventy years in the future to time traveling to stop an alien from wiping out half the universe. But it's still - it's up there, really, when he considers just how... on the nose that is. Which speaks, if nothing else, to the complexity and the gravity of the situation he's - they're - in.

So, yeah. He gets the implications. And he doesn't like them.

"So you were feeding it," he says, and the tone is careful. Not judgemental at all, just taking stock of the situation. "Do you know how?"

"This." He taps the mask, now hooked onto his belt. "I don't wear it except on duty anymore. And not always then. Shooting too well. There was a shared nightmare thing where I had to kill some of our coworkers to protect some others, it liked how they felt about me after we all woke up. Looming around silently. Not acting like a person."

He's still not entirely sure what acting like a person really entails, but he's working on it. He knows not to do the other things. And to talk more. To try to make expressions more than frowning. That's hard.

Wearing a mask. Shooting too well. Looming. Not acting like a person.

Well, Steve is definitely frowning now. None of that is... "So it's not a conscious choice," he says, quietly. "It's just - traits. Habits. Skills."

Well, shit.

"How did you figure out that's what was happening? That you were feeding it. That it liked those things."

Edited 2022-04-10 22:38 (UTC)

"They're not stupid. They attach to people that fit them. So it's harder to resist." A pause. "And so they scare us more."

Because that's part of the point, too, right? It's also what scares you, on some level.

He scowls at the floor at the question. "There was a week when we were snowed in. Fake snow. Illusion. Couldn't dig our way out. Everyone who was tied to an entity. Everyone got worse. Felt it more. I finally noticed it then. Scared someone in the halls, with my mask on, and felt it."

Steve considers that information, nods. So he needs to be on the lookout for... he's still not entirely sure, yet, but any odd feelings, for sure. He's going to need to be aware of his actions, at least. And how they make him feel.

Sounds fun. But - well. More fun than being controlled by some kind of world-ending fear entity, at least.

"Okay," he says, carefully. "I'll... try to stay aware." He lets out a breath, glances around. Puts his eyes back on the path heads. "I trust you," he says, quietly. "More than I think I'll trust anyone else here."

He just - figures he ought to put it out there. Even if it won't get a great reaction. It's still true.

Winter scowls, but thankfully Steve can't see it from his angle. "You shouldn't. I tried to kill you. I almost did." And he hates that he did it. It haunts him still. And it's entirely possible that he might do it again. He looks down at the stairs they're climbing, and scrubs his flesh hand over his face. "This place twists things. Changes our perceptions. I might do it again, thinking you're. Someone else. Or thrown back into the fight in my head. You have to be careful."

"But you didn't," is the natural counter for that - it's what counts, after all. It's always what's counted.

Steve can see how uncomfortable he is, and hearing that... yeah. He can see why. But, "That's different. That's still you under the influence of something. I guess I might do the same thing, if it can happen to anyone. But that doesn't mean I don't trust you."

He maybe breezes right over being careful. Steve Rogers wasn't careful, even when he was 90 pounds soaking wet with a heart that didn't know how to keep time. He certainly hasn't changed since then.

Even so, "I'll stay sharp," he says, which is the best he can promise. And he means it. "Should I try to... break you out of it, if something like that happens? If you think I'm someone else, or if you think you're somewhere else?"

Finally Steve says something useful instead of sentimental, that seems like sound tactics instead of something that's going to freak Winter out. He nods firmly. "Yes. It's hallucinations. Magical or otherwise. They can be broken." And because Steve is likely to run into the same, he looks over his shoulder and adds, "I will, too. Or I'll try."

They're almost at the ADI office for new arrivals, at least. So he can stop suppressing whatever he's feeling and bolt for somebody he can panic at.

"That's the door," he says, gesturing.

"Okay," Steve says, nodding too, and it probably shouldn't be a relief, to have to plan for things like hallucinations and confusion, but somehow, it is. It's something he can do. Something for Bucky - Winter. It's something.

He glances to where the other indicates, and, "Guess this is my stop, then," he says, letting out a breath, standing up a little taller, hefting the hammer at his side. He still glances back to Winter, says, "Thanks. I'll catch you around, then?"

He's past the point, thankfully, where he wouldn't have let this man out of his sight. He can feel that familiar, niggling fear, trying to rise up in him, but he's past it. It's been years. He doesn't have to fall back into that again.

Winter's only past that point because he's going to crack if he looks at him for too long, he thinks. It's entirely possible he'll wind up hovering nearby to Steve for... a while, going forward, until he figures out his feelings and how to have them in a nominally normal fashion.

He doesn't look at Steve again, not directly, because he thinks if he does he might crack now. "Find me. When you get out again. I'll go to my apartment after work."

Well, should that happen, Steve will have no problem with it. (He might be kind of awkward, trying to learn a new name and how to be around a man he so desperately wanted to help and very much missed the window on, the first time, but he will still have no problem with it.)

"Okay," he agrees, hand on the doorknob. "Okay, I'll come find you. I'll see you later."

And he means it. Once he's got his marching orders, so to speak, once he's found his own apartment, he'll come find Winter, and they'll figure it out from there.

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Log: A (dusty) new arrival

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