Whumptober, days 1-5
Oct. 6th, 2019 07:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI’ve been posting my daily Whumptober fills on Tumblr as I go, but I’ve decided to repost them here every five days, labeled with the prompt & fandom for your reading pleasure.
And there are still MANY prompts to be filled (see the full list here); I’m doing them more or less in order. Request a prompt if you like!
1. Shaky Hands. Origfic; the revolution failed
“Nessan,” Temis said, and Nessan stopped with her hand on the tent flap. “Can I ask a favor of you? Just in case they arrest me.”
“If they were going to arrest you, they would’ve done it already,” Nessan argued. “Wouldn’t they?”
“I have no idea. Maybe it’s not the done thing to arrest the messenger of a surrendering army,” Temis said. She laughed a little jaggedly, and lifted her hands to her necklace, and tried to slip it over her head. Her hands trembled badly, and the chain kept tangling with the loose wisps of her wavy hair. Odd not to have it up in warbraids any longer. “It will be a long time before I’m home, in any case. There will be negotiations, and things, I don’t know. I’m too tired, I can’t think.” Temis finally got the necklace over her head. It slipped from her grasp and fell on the table. The dog tags clinked on the deal wood.
There were at least a score of dog tags there. Temis had not realized she’d collected so many. Metal tags, wooden ones, one carved of horn by the campfire. That was Gabi’s. He had carved it by the campfire…
Temis lifted it. Noni bel Gladi, it read.
But Temis could see it so clearly: Gabi by the campfire, the firelight playing over his face, his big lumpy nose so prominent that it had become a byname: Gabi the Nose. How he’d hated that.
It was only after he was dead that they started to shower the good bynames on him. Gabi Hold the Bridge. Gabi the Defender.
What the hell had Gabi been carving, then? Did she even have his tags? It had been so long since she’d looked at them, instead of just collecting them around her neck, so she could bring that much of them home, at least…
“Captain?”
Nessan’s soft voice startled Temis so badly she nearly knocked the tags off the table. “I want you to return these tags to their families. The next best thing to a body. Just the ones that are on your way home, you understand...” She couldn’t open the clasp. She couldn’t even get a grip on it: it kept slipping from her hands. “I’m sorry. I can’t think why my hands are shaking like this.”
“Captain.” Nessan put her hands over Temis’s, pressing Temis’s trembling fingers with her own warm palms. “Let me do it. Here.” She took up the thin chain and undid the clasp. “Just tell me which ones to take.”
Temis shook her head. She slid her hands off the table and clasped them between her knees to try to stop their trembling. “I can’t even remember everyone I’m carrying anymore,” she said. “I lost track last winter…”
“Do you want me to read them to you?”
Temis gagged on the thought. “No,” she said. She took up the chain again and tried to close the clasp. “I’ll carry them a little longer. You should head out, lieutenant.”
Nessan took the chain from her hand and closed the clasp for her. She lifted the necklace, and Temis bowed her head so Nessan could slip it back around her neck, and smooth it over her shoulders. Then she stepped back and saluted.
“There’s no need for that,” Temis protested. “We’ve surrendered. We’re not even an army now.”
“You will always be my captain.”
So Temis stood as well, and snapped a smart salute. Then she dropped her hand to her heart and gave a half-bow, in the old fashion, and Nessan stepped forward and gave her a hug. Temis clung onto her, and nearly wept into the scratchy wool of her shoulder.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to stay?” Nessan asked.
Even though Nessan’s woolen greatcoat, Temis could feel the bones in her back. “Go home, girl,” Temis said, still holding her, although her hands couldn’t grip tightly. “You need feeding.”
And then she forced herself to let go, and step back, and snap another salute. Nessan saluted, and left, and only when the tent flap had closed behind her did Temis let herself sit down again, and put her face in her trembling hands; and she sat that way for a long time, although she was too tired to cry.
Alt. Prompt 14. Touch-starved. Captain America; Steve/Buckyish although part of the whump is the fact that it’s no more than -ish.
They’re eating breakfast when Steve touches Bucky’s shoulder. Just a casual touch. He’s passing behind Bucky’s chair to get to the fridge and his hand brushes Bucky’s shoulder as he passes.
Bucky freezes. He’s just lifted a piece of toast to his mouth and he’s halfway through ripping off a bite and he just stops right there, with the toast in midair, because he wants to bury his face in Steve’s shirt, wrap his arms around Steve’s waist, feel the heat of his body through the fabric and breathe in the scent of his skin. He wants to hold him and never let go.
Steve’s hand is already gone. He’s looking through the refrigerator for the orange juice. He probably doesn’t even know that he touched Bucky at all.
***
The thing is, they’re so close, all the time. They’re so close and never touching. They eat dinner together at the kitchen table, and maybe if Bucky’s lucky Steve’s foot slips, and he kicks Bucky under the table. “Sorry,” Steve says, and Bucky nods and grunts like he’s not feeling that touch all through his body, like the ripples after tossing a pebble into a pond. Or they sit together on Steve’s couch to watch a movie (it’s great, this Netflix thing, you can watch a movie any time you want without even leaving your home), each at their own end of the couch, with a whole empty cushion in between them.
So maybe Netflix isn’t so great after all. At a movie theater they’d be crowded in side by side, just a skinny little armrest between them, and their arms would almost certainly brush.
But that isn’t really what he wants, either, just the light brush of their arms. He wants Steve to put his hands on him, not just briefly, to put his hands on Bucky and hold them there till the warmth seeps through his skin. He wants Steve to put his arms around him. He wants to crawl in Steve’s lap and cling to him like a baby koala bear.
It’s when Steve leans over Bucky’s shoulder to look at something on his computer that Steve notices. And Steve’s not even touching him, not really, he’s just close enough that Bucky can feel the heat of his body, and Bucky freezes, because he wants more so much that it paralyzes him.
“What was that thing you were going to show me, Buck? Bucky?” Steve says, when Bucky doesn’t respond, and then Steve is no longer leaning over his shoulder, but has moved a careful three feet away.
“It’s right here,” Bucky says, preparing to click over.
But Steve’s no longer looking at the computer. “You don’t like it when I touch you, do you?” Steve asks.
Bucky’s mouth opens in a soundless O.
“It’s okay,” Steve says. “I would’ve stopped earlier if I’d noticed sooner. If you don’t like something, you can tell me, Buck, you know that, right?”
Bucky nods. His mouth is still open. He has never had a problem telling Steve what he doesn’t like.
It’s saying what he wants that’s impossible.
3. Delirium. Agent Carter. Peggy & Dottie. They’ve been forced to team up, and now Dottie is badly injured.
The sad thing is, the blizzard is the first good luck they’ve had all week. As long as it keeps blowing, the agents of SPARROW won’t be able to find Peggy and Dottie in this Alpine hut.
It’s not like they would be able to leave, anyway, even if the wind weren’t blowing so fiercely that it makes the windows rattle. Dottie can’t walk with those festering gunshot wounds in her leg, and even if she hadn’t smashed their radio, Peggy could hardly use it to call for back-up. “Oh yes, my ski vacation got interrupted when Dottie Underwood roped me into a mission to investigate a secret chemical weapons lab deep in the Alps. Yes, Dottie, the Soviet spy who has tried to kill us all at least once. She’s worked up quite an infection, so could you please deliver a spot of penicillin?”
“It never would have come to this if you let me clean the wounds earlier,” Peggy informs Dottie’s sleeping form. She cleaned them as best she could, with brandy and hot water, and she hopes that it will be enough.
Dottie doesn’t answer, of course. Even in the dim light, Peggy can see the hectic flush on her cheeks. Her lips, devoid for once of any lipstick (Peggy had destroyed Dottie’s make-up bag after Dottie waylaid her with yet another knockout kiss), are cracked and dry. The curl has come out of her hair, and the lank straight strands give her an Alice in Wonderland look that makes her look curiously young, as she might have looked when she was a child in one of those ghastly Soviet spy-training facilities where they handcuffed the girls to the beds.
Peggy rarely allows herself to think about Dottie’s childhood. She shouldn’t do so now. She ought to remain on her guard as long as they are alone together, even if Dottie seems quite helpless. That might be just a tactic: Peggy has used it herself at need. Act helpless and strike when they’ve let their guard down...
Dottie squirms uncomfortably on the hard narrow bunk. Peggy rests a cool hand on Dottie’s burning forehead and brushes her hair out of her face. Dottie murmurs something indistinct.
“I’ll get you a glass of water,” Peggy decides. But when she tries to get up, Dottie grabs her hand, and even in her current weakened state her grip is very strong. She looks into Peggy’s face and whispers something: the tone urgent, almost imploring, but the words nearly drowned out by the roar of the blizzard. “Dottie darling, I can’t understand you,” Peggy says, and brushes Peggy’s hair back again, and Dottie grabs Peggy’s lapels and pulls her in so close that their faces are only inches apart.
It’s only then that Peggy can hear well enough to tell that Dottie is speaking Russian.
Wonderful. Dottie could be spilling all sorts of Soviet secrets and Peggy will never know, because her governess only taught her French. If Mama had hired that White Russian emigre like Peggy had wanted…
It doesn’t sound like state secrets, though. It sounds like Dottie is asking for… something, begging for it really, and Peggy has no idea what. Not that it really matters. Dottie is staring into Peggy’s face, clinging to her lapels, but those flushed cheeks and glassy eyes suggest that she’s seeing someone else in her delirium.
“Dottie darling,” Peggy says again. She gathers Dottie up in her arms, as if Dottie really was a sick child, and Dottie clutches her, burying her hot face against Peggy’s neck.
Peggy pats her back. She tries to remember what her governess did when Peggy was sick. (Hugs were definitely the governess’s province; much too touchy feely for Peggy’s parents.) She rubs Dottie’s back gingerly. It does not produce an adverse reaction.
“You’re burning up,” Peggy tells her. “Let me get you some water.” But when Peggy tries to stand, Dottie drags her back down, and now at least she’s saying Peggy understands: Nyet, nyet, nyet. Masha…
Masha, Peggy thinks, as Dottie mumbles unintelligibly again. A girl’s name. A friend? An enemy? Given Dottie’s ideas about friendship, there might not be much differences. A schoolmate…
Peggy knows very little about Dottie’s life, but she knows something about Soviet casualty rates in World War II. She holds Dottie close and strokes her hair, and even kisses her temple very gently, and lets Dottie pour her heart out to the dead comrade she is seeing in her mind.
4. Human shield. Captain America. Steve and the STRIKE team.
Rumlow was right. Steve’s fine.
He reminds himself of this as he washes his hands at the sink. Sure, his ribs hurt so bad that he’s almost afraid to take off his suit, because the pressure is holding everything in place right now and releasing it will bring a whole new wave of pain, but he’ll heal. He always does. He would have healed even if the bulletproof fabric didn’t stop all the bullets, but it did.
They would’ve had to get the perfect shot to kill him. A bullet right to the kisser: his cowl doesn’t cover his mouth. But they didn’t, so he’s fine.
His hands are beginning to hurt, though. He looks down, and flinches back when he sees that his knuckles are bleeding. He’s been washing his hands for a while now.
He turns off the tap and holds onto the chipped porcelain sink. It’s not that his hands feel dirty this time. It’s just that he doesn’t want to leave this little room and face the STRIKE team.
Face Rumlow.
That smile on Rumlow’s face, just before he grabbed Steve by the straps and swung Steve in front of him like a shield. The deafening blast of his gun going off by Steve’s ear as he shot over Steve’s shoulder; the heat of the barrel, the heat of Rumlow’s breath on his other ear. “Don’t mind if I use you as a human shield, do you, big guy?”
Steve had already taken two to the chest, which knocked all the air out of his lungs, so he couldn’t answer.
And it was fine: it got them out of that room alive, and that’s the important thing. They completed the mission. Everyone’s safe. They’re going to a steakhouse to celebrate: STRIKE team tradition.
Someone pounds on the door. “Rogers! You comin’ or what?”
“Just a minute,” Steve calls. He catches sight of himself in the mirror. He looks pale in the light of the single flickering fluorescent bulb in this safehouse bathroom.
He steels himself, and peels down the top half of his suit. It takes him a minute to recognize the red fluid that covers one side of his body is blood.
Not quite bulletproof after all, apparently.
“You guys head out to the steakhouse without me,” Steve calls. He hopes his voice is steady. “I’m just gonna hit the sack.”
It’s not till later, when he’s trying to sew up the wound in his own side, that it occurs to him that he probably should’ve asked one of them for help. Oh well. It’s too late now.
And it doesn’t really need to be sewn up, anyway. Not with his superhealing. He’ll heal. He always does.
This next ficlet, forskygiants, requires a brief introduction. The Talk of the Town is a 1942 movie starring Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, and Ronald Colman. Leopold Dilg (Grant) is a union organizer framed for arson who decides to hide out in the house of his old school crush, Nora Shelley (Arther)... only to discover that Nora has just rented the house to a judge, Michael Lightcap. Of course they all end up becoming dear friends and the fandom (all three members of it) OT3 them.
5. Gunpoint. The Talk of the Town; Leopold Dilg has fallen afoul of anti-union forces again.
The law is a gun pointed at somebody’s head.
The words Leopold Dilg had once spoken to Michael Lightcap flitted through his head as he stood atop a rickety pile of orange crates that had been his makeshift stage, looking down the barrels of half a dozen guns. Actual policemen, too: Mr. Dole had the whole of this benighted county in his pocket.
“Come down with your hands up, Dilg,” Chief Conroy bellowed into his bullhorn.
Dilg’s hands remained in his pockets. He had to squint against the blazing light of the spotlight trained on his face. “I happen to like it up here,” he called. “Might stay for a while. Why don’t you come up and enjoy the view, Conroy?”
Actually, it was a damn unsteady place to stand even when he didn’t have six guns pointed at his head, but the longer the police kept their attention on him, the longer Mr. Dole’s employees would have to make their getaway.
Conroy snapped his fingers. A gunshot followed. The corner of Dilg’s box went up in sawdust.
“You make a persuasive argument,” Dilg allowed. After all, he owed it to Nora not to come home looking like a piece of Swiss cheese.
But as he made a move to climb down, another shot rang out. “Hands up,” bellowed Conroy.
Dilg removed his hands from his pockets.
“Higher!” Conroy roared.
“Well, Conroy, it’s a little hard for me to climb down with my hands up, now isn’t it?” Dilg said, clambering down from the top crate.
The spotlight had blinded him: he didn’t see the two policeman rushing toward him until they grabbed his legs. They dragged him off the makeshift stage and threw him to the muddy ground. The fall knocked the wind out of him. He didn’t have a chance to get his breath back before one of them jerked his hands behind his back, slapped him in handcuffs, and dragged him up to his knees by his hair.
Forget Swiss cheese; they were going to send him back to Nora looking like a piece of raw meat. She deserved better than this life he was giving her.
He’d been a damned fool to entice her away from Lightcap. He should’ve let the two people he loved most in the world be happy together.
“None of your lip, Dilg,” Conroy said. He looked down at Dilg, and spit. “Even your boyfriend won’t be able to get you out of this one.”
Dilg wheezed out a bitter laugh. As if Lightcap would ever look at Dilg that way.
Conroy’s face turned red with fury. He brought the butt down on the back of Dilg’s head. Everything went black.
And there are still MANY prompts to be filled (see the full list here); I’m doing them more or less in order. Request a prompt if you like!
1. Shaky Hands. Origfic; the revolution failed
“Nessan,” Temis said, and Nessan stopped with her hand on the tent flap. “Can I ask a favor of you? Just in case they arrest me.”
“If they were going to arrest you, they would’ve done it already,” Nessan argued. “Wouldn’t they?”
“I have no idea. Maybe it’s not the done thing to arrest the messenger of a surrendering army,” Temis said. She laughed a little jaggedly, and lifted her hands to her necklace, and tried to slip it over her head. Her hands trembled badly, and the chain kept tangling with the loose wisps of her wavy hair. Odd not to have it up in warbraids any longer. “It will be a long time before I’m home, in any case. There will be negotiations, and things, I don’t know. I’m too tired, I can’t think.” Temis finally got the necklace over her head. It slipped from her grasp and fell on the table. The dog tags clinked on the deal wood.
There were at least a score of dog tags there. Temis had not realized she’d collected so many. Metal tags, wooden ones, one carved of horn by the campfire. That was Gabi’s. He had carved it by the campfire…
Temis lifted it. Noni bel Gladi, it read.
But Temis could see it so clearly: Gabi by the campfire, the firelight playing over his face, his big lumpy nose so prominent that it had become a byname: Gabi the Nose. How he’d hated that.
It was only after he was dead that they started to shower the good bynames on him. Gabi Hold the Bridge. Gabi the Defender.
What the hell had Gabi been carving, then? Did she even have his tags? It had been so long since she’d looked at them, instead of just collecting them around her neck, so she could bring that much of them home, at least…
“Captain?”
Nessan’s soft voice startled Temis so badly she nearly knocked the tags off the table. “I want you to return these tags to their families. The next best thing to a body. Just the ones that are on your way home, you understand...” She couldn’t open the clasp. She couldn’t even get a grip on it: it kept slipping from her hands. “I’m sorry. I can’t think why my hands are shaking like this.”
“Captain.” Nessan put her hands over Temis’s, pressing Temis’s trembling fingers with her own warm palms. “Let me do it. Here.” She took up the thin chain and undid the clasp. “Just tell me which ones to take.”
Temis shook her head. She slid her hands off the table and clasped them between her knees to try to stop their trembling. “I can’t even remember everyone I’m carrying anymore,” she said. “I lost track last winter…”
“Do you want me to read them to you?”
Temis gagged on the thought. “No,” she said. She took up the chain again and tried to close the clasp. “I’ll carry them a little longer. You should head out, lieutenant.”
Nessan took the chain from her hand and closed the clasp for her. She lifted the necklace, and Temis bowed her head so Nessan could slip it back around her neck, and smooth it over her shoulders. Then she stepped back and saluted.
“There’s no need for that,” Temis protested. “We’ve surrendered. We’re not even an army now.”
“You will always be my captain.”
So Temis stood as well, and snapped a smart salute. Then she dropped her hand to her heart and gave a half-bow, in the old fashion, and Nessan stepped forward and gave her a hug. Temis clung onto her, and nearly wept into the scratchy wool of her shoulder.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to stay?” Nessan asked.
Even though Nessan’s woolen greatcoat, Temis could feel the bones in her back. “Go home, girl,” Temis said, still holding her, although her hands couldn’t grip tightly. “You need feeding.”
And then she forced herself to let go, and step back, and snap another salute. Nessan saluted, and left, and only when the tent flap had closed behind her did Temis let herself sit down again, and put her face in her trembling hands; and she sat that way for a long time, although she was too tired to cry.
Alt. Prompt 14. Touch-starved. Captain America; Steve/Buckyish although part of the whump is the fact that it’s no more than -ish.
They’re eating breakfast when Steve touches Bucky’s shoulder. Just a casual touch. He’s passing behind Bucky’s chair to get to the fridge and his hand brushes Bucky’s shoulder as he passes.
Bucky freezes. He’s just lifted a piece of toast to his mouth and he’s halfway through ripping off a bite and he just stops right there, with the toast in midair, because he wants to bury his face in Steve’s shirt, wrap his arms around Steve’s waist, feel the heat of his body through the fabric and breathe in the scent of his skin. He wants to hold him and never let go.
Steve’s hand is already gone. He’s looking through the refrigerator for the orange juice. He probably doesn’t even know that he touched Bucky at all.
***
The thing is, they’re so close, all the time. They’re so close and never touching. They eat dinner together at the kitchen table, and maybe if Bucky’s lucky Steve’s foot slips, and he kicks Bucky under the table. “Sorry,” Steve says, and Bucky nods and grunts like he’s not feeling that touch all through his body, like the ripples after tossing a pebble into a pond. Or they sit together on Steve’s couch to watch a movie (it’s great, this Netflix thing, you can watch a movie any time you want without even leaving your home), each at their own end of the couch, with a whole empty cushion in between them.
So maybe Netflix isn’t so great after all. At a movie theater they’d be crowded in side by side, just a skinny little armrest between them, and their arms would almost certainly brush.
But that isn’t really what he wants, either, just the light brush of their arms. He wants Steve to put his hands on him, not just briefly, to put his hands on Bucky and hold them there till the warmth seeps through his skin. He wants Steve to put his arms around him. He wants to crawl in Steve’s lap and cling to him like a baby koala bear.
It’s when Steve leans over Bucky’s shoulder to look at something on his computer that Steve notices. And Steve’s not even touching him, not really, he’s just close enough that Bucky can feel the heat of his body, and Bucky freezes, because he wants more so much that it paralyzes him.
“What was that thing you were going to show me, Buck? Bucky?” Steve says, when Bucky doesn’t respond, and then Steve is no longer leaning over his shoulder, but has moved a careful three feet away.
“It’s right here,” Bucky says, preparing to click over.
But Steve’s no longer looking at the computer. “You don’t like it when I touch you, do you?” Steve asks.
Bucky’s mouth opens in a soundless O.
“It’s okay,” Steve says. “I would’ve stopped earlier if I’d noticed sooner. If you don’t like something, you can tell me, Buck, you know that, right?”
Bucky nods. His mouth is still open. He has never had a problem telling Steve what he doesn’t like.
It’s saying what he wants that’s impossible.
3. Delirium. Agent Carter. Peggy & Dottie. They’ve been forced to team up, and now Dottie is badly injured.
The sad thing is, the blizzard is the first good luck they’ve had all week. As long as it keeps blowing, the agents of SPARROW won’t be able to find Peggy and Dottie in this Alpine hut.
It’s not like they would be able to leave, anyway, even if the wind weren’t blowing so fiercely that it makes the windows rattle. Dottie can’t walk with those festering gunshot wounds in her leg, and even if she hadn’t smashed their radio, Peggy could hardly use it to call for back-up. “Oh yes, my ski vacation got interrupted when Dottie Underwood roped me into a mission to investigate a secret chemical weapons lab deep in the Alps. Yes, Dottie, the Soviet spy who has tried to kill us all at least once. She’s worked up quite an infection, so could you please deliver a spot of penicillin?”
“It never would have come to this if you let me clean the wounds earlier,” Peggy informs Dottie’s sleeping form. She cleaned them as best she could, with brandy and hot water, and she hopes that it will be enough.
Dottie doesn’t answer, of course. Even in the dim light, Peggy can see the hectic flush on her cheeks. Her lips, devoid for once of any lipstick (Peggy had destroyed Dottie’s make-up bag after Dottie waylaid her with yet another knockout kiss), are cracked and dry. The curl has come out of her hair, and the lank straight strands give her an Alice in Wonderland look that makes her look curiously young, as she might have looked when she was a child in one of those ghastly Soviet spy-training facilities where they handcuffed the girls to the beds.
Peggy rarely allows herself to think about Dottie’s childhood. She shouldn’t do so now. She ought to remain on her guard as long as they are alone together, even if Dottie seems quite helpless. That might be just a tactic: Peggy has used it herself at need. Act helpless and strike when they’ve let their guard down...
Dottie squirms uncomfortably on the hard narrow bunk. Peggy rests a cool hand on Dottie’s burning forehead and brushes her hair out of her face. Dottie murmurs something indistinct.
“I’ll get you a glass of water,” Peggy decides. But when she tries to get up, Dottie grabs her hand, and even in her current weakened state her grip is very strong. She looks into Peggy’s face and whispers something: the tone urgent, almost imploring, but the words nearly drowned out by the roar of the blizzard. “Dottie darling, I can’t understand you,” Peggy says, and brushes Peggy’s hair back again, and Dottie grabs Peggy’s lapels and pulls her in so close that their faces are only inches apart.
It’s only then that Peggy can hear well enough to tell that Dottie is speaking Russian.
Wonderful. Dottie could be spilling all sorts of Soviet secrets and Peggy will never know, because her governess only taught her French. If Mama had hired that White Russian emigre like Peggy had wanted…
It doesn’t sound like state secrets, though. It sounds like Dottie is asking for… something, begging for it really, and Peggy has no idea what. Not that it really matters. Dottie is staring into Peggy’s face, clinging to her lapels, but those flushed cheeks and glassy eyes suggest that she’s seeing someone else in her delirium.
“Dottie darling,” Peggy says again. She gathers Dottie up in her arms, as if Dottie really was a sick child, and Dottie clutches her, burying her hot face against Peggy’s neck.
Peggy pats her back. She tries to remember what her governess did when Peggy was sick. (Hugs were definitely the governess’s province; much too touchy feely for Peggy’s parents.) She rubs Dottie’s back gingerly. It does not produce an adverse reaction.
“You’re burning up,” Peggy tells her. “Let me get you some water.” But when Peggy tries to stand, Dottie drags her back down, and now at least she’s saying Peggy understands: Nyet, nyet, nyet. Masha…
Masha, Peggy thinks, as Dottie mumbles unintelligibly again. A girl’s name. A friend? An enemy? Given Dottie’s ideas about friendship, there might not be much differences. A schoolmate…
Peggy knows very little about Dottie’s life, but she knows something about Soviet casualty rates in World War II. She holds Dottie close and strokes her hair, and even kisses her temple very gently, and lets Dottie pour her heart out to the dead comrade she is seeing in her mind.
4. Human shield. Captain America. Steve and the STRIKE team.
Rumlow was right. Steve’s fine.
He reminds himself of this as he washes his hands at the sink. Sure, his ribs hurt so bad that he’s almost afraid to take off his suit, because the pressure is holding everything in place right now and releasing it will bring a whole new wave of pain, but he’ll heal. He always does. He would have healed even if the bulletproof fabric didn’t stop all the bullets, but it did.
They would’ve had to get the perfect shot to kill him. A bullet right to the kisser: his cowl doesn’t cover his mouth. But they didn’t, so he’s fine.
His hands are beginning to hurt, though. He looks down, and flinches back when he sees that his knuckles are bleeding. He’s been washing his hands for a while now.
He turns off the tap and holds onto the chipped porcelain sink. It’s not that his hands feel dirty this time. It’s just that he doesn’t want to leave this little room and face the STRIKE team.
Face Rumlow.
That smile on Rumlow’s face, just before he grabbed Steve by the straps and swung Steve in front of him like a shield. The deafening blast of his gun going off by Steve’s ear as he shot over Steve’s shoulder; the heat of the barrel, the heat of Rumlow’s breath on his other ear. “Don’t mind if I use you as a human shield, do you, big guy?”
Steve had already taken two to the chest, which knocked all the air out of his lungs, so he couldn’t answer.
And it was fine: it got them out of that room alive, and that’s the important thing. They completed the mission. Everyone’s safe. They’re going to a steakhouse to celebrate: STRIKE team tradition.
Someone pounds on the door. “Rogers! You comin’ or what?”
“Just a minute,” Steve calls. He catches sight of himself in the mirror. He looks pale in the light of the single flickering fluorescent bulb in this safehouse bathroom.
He steels himself, and peels down the top half of his suit. It takes him a minute to recognize the red fluid that covers one side of his body is blood.
Not quite bulletproof after all, apparently.
“You guys head out to the steakhouse without me,” Steve calls. He hopes his voice is steady. “I’m just gonna hit the sack.”
It’s not till later, when he’s trying to sew up the wound in his own side, that it occurs to him that he probably should’ve asked one of them for help. Oh well. It’s too late now.
And it doesn’t really need to be sewn up, anyway. Not with his superhealing. He’ll heal. He always does.
This next ficlet, for
skygiants, requires a brief introduction. The Talk of the Town is a 1942 movie starring Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, and Ronald Colman. Leopold Dilg (Grant) is a union organizer framed for arson who decides to hide out in the house of his old school crush, Nora Shelley (Arther)... only to discover that Nora has just rented the house to a judge, Michael Lightcap. Of course they all end up becoming dear friends and the fandom (all three members of it) OT3 them.5. Gunpoint. The Talk of the Town; Leopold Dilg has fallen afoul of anti-union forces again.
The law is a gun pointed at somebody’s head.
The words Leopold Dilg had once spoken to Michael Lightcap flitted through his head as he stood atop a rickety pile of orange crates that had been his makeshift stage, looking down the barrels of half a dozen guns. Actual policemen, too: Mr. Dole had the whole of this benighted county in his pocket.
“Come down with your hands up, Dilg,” Chief Conroy bellowed into his bullhorn.
Dilg’s hands remained in his pockets. He had to squint against the blazing light of the spotlight trained on his face. “I happen to like it up here,” he called. “Might stay for a while. Why don’t you come up and enjoy the view, Conroy?”
Actually, it was a damn unsteady place to stand even when he didn’t have six guns pointed at his head, but the longer the police kept their attention on him, the longer Mr. Dole’s employees would have to make their getaway.
Conroy snapped his fingers. A gunshot followed. The corner of Dilg’s box went up in sawdust.
“You make a persuasive argument,” Dilg allowed. After all, he owed it to Nora not to come home looking like a piece of Swiss cheese.
But as he made a move to climb down, another shot rang out. “Hands up,” bellowed Conroy.
Dilg removed his hands from his pockets.
“Higher!” Conroy roared.
“Well, Conroy, it’s a little hard for me to climb down with my hands up, now isn’t it?” Dilg said, clambering down from the top crate.
The spotlight had blinded him: he didn’t see the two policeman rushing toward him until they grabbed his legs. They dragged him off the makeshift stage and threw him to the muddy ground. The fall knocked the wind out of him. He didn’t have a chance to get his breath back before one of them jerked his hands behind his back, slapped him in handcuffs, and dragged him up to his knees by his hair.
Forget Swiss cheese; they were going to send him back to Nora looking like a piece of raw meat. She deserved better than this life he was giving her.
He’d been a damned fool to entice her away from Lightcap. He should’ve let the two people he loved most in the world be happy together.
“None of your lip, Dilg,” Conroy said. He looked down at Dilg, and spit. “Even your boyfriend won’t be able to get you out of this one.”
Dilg wheezed out a bitter laugh. As if Lightcap would ever look at Dilg that way.
Conroy’s face turned red with fury. He brought the butt down on the back of Dilg’s head. Everything went black.
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Date: 2019-10-06 02:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-10-06 05:13 pm (UTC)And obviously Lightcap is going to come to the hospital with a container full of borscht with an egg in it. Will he kiss Dilg gently on the forehead? MAYBE.
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Date: 2019-10-06 06:37 pm (UTC)....omg the MCU ones. I don't know which is more heartbreaking, Bucky or Steve or Peggy! I think I like the Peggy/Dottie one best, just because Dottie would never know she had gotten that comfort and would probably freak out if she did know. AUGH. So good.
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Date: 2019-10-06 11:14 pm (UTC)And then probably SPARROW operatives will descend on their alpine hut and take them captive so even if they wanted to, which they do not, they will not be able to discuss it further.
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Date: 2019-10-06 11:17 pm (UTC)But they will KNOW. Or at least, WONDER. (Imagine if Natasha finds out, years and years later....)
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Date: 2019-10-06 11:23 pm (UTC)"And how is Miss Underwood?" she asks, very casually, near the end of the interview.
This is the only moment in the interview when Natasha's calm falters, just briefly. The girls always argued whether Miss Underwood really knew Director Carter, and now Natasha has proof - real proof! - and for a moment she expands with happiness, before she realizes that she will never see those girls again to tell them. And if she did, they would no longer believe her, because she's a traitor.
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Date: 2019-10-06 11:25 pm (UTC)AUGH HOW CAN YOU DELIGHT ME AND BREAK MY HEART AT THE SAME TIME
BUT YESSSSSS
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Date: 2019-10-07 02:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-10-07 02:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-10-07 04:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-10-07 05:26 pm (UTC)