Rooms

[Text to Tim D]
--I'm back.

Do you have a minute? Want to do me a favor?

[Written in a flowing, careful script]

I dare not trust this magic that has brought about this journal, nor do I trust the fact that others may read what is exchanged upon these pages.

However, I must beseech you all. Please tell me, what do we know of these strange journals?

I can inform you of my identity, if it may aide in your response. I am the Lady Mary, the eldest daughter of the King of England, King Henry VIII. The last date that I recall is 1534, though the Mistress Anne Boleyn recalls a date in the future, 1536. How is this possible, pray tell?

Who: Cal H and Steve R
What: A rude welcome to Marvel-land.
When: On crossing.
Where: Street in broad daylight.

( There was a buzzing in his ears, like a fly, like a host of flies, all cramming in at the same time )

Who: Max (and a few NPCs)
What: "Changing," and getting a new assignment
Where: Her apt. → Washington D.C. → Her apt.
When: Nowish
Warnings/Rating: A dead guy?

( A few hours later, she left with a squeaky clean driver's license and a new social security card. Marquilla Mackenzie, Mack for short, was a trainer at a gym on the lower east side. )

[Everyone from top to basement hears the contained, window-rattling boom of one of Tony's suit upgrades going slightly awry. Sigh. Business as usual.]

[Public.]

Oops. Sorry.

[Since the capture Dr. Ock, in the form of Peter Parker, that night in the old Navy Yard, Steve has been dogged by memories and images he can't shake from his head. They gum up his thoughts in the gauze of the past. They come in violent, red-filtered flashes, in the most mundane of moments. He'll be walking to the break room from the screening room, just stretching his legs and muttering about Loki, and suddenly the acrid scent of gunpowder, the iron taste of blood, the thundering of shells, drop down around him in a full scene of mid-century warfare. There are screams, boys begging for their mothers, for water, for God, in that order, and he'll feel a cold finger of sweat drop between shoulder blades. Then it's with him. The rest of the day, after a 20 second horror show, he's on edge, miniature battles being fought in the acid that builds up in his muscles. He never shakes, but that's a simple miracle and has nothing to do with personal constitution.

That's only part of the reason it's become routine to head to that hole-in-the-wall gym on the Lower East Side. He wasn't lying to Ms. Stacy when he said he was angry. He is angry. Not at the babies, the flowers, the dogs, but at everything else, the helplessness he feels in the steel face of this new century, the confusion. And now, these moments that his thawed brain recalls of its own volition that drown out reality. The gym helps. The bags of sand help. Steve sweats, his skin glistening in the humming yellow bulbs of the low-lit gym. His muscles coil and release, pumping against the splitting face of the bag, transferring some of that anger violently.

He's off in his own little world, the ugly, small world of his mind. Peggy is a relief. Bucky is a relief. Hell, even Stark is a relief. But none of them are enough. There's still too much and he's still angry, so he punches the crap out of a bag, alone, his lips pressed together and sweat stinging his eyes.]