s (atrophy) wrote in rooms, @ 2014-07-27 04:48:00 |
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Entry tags: | !marvel comics, *narrative, steve rogers |
narrative, Marvel: Steve R
Who: Steve Rogers
What: narrative
Where: boxing gym, Brooklyn
When: late night, nowish
Warnings/Rating: none
He was alone. The clap of cotton-wrapped canvas, a heavy bag on a necklace of steel, in electric grid gray sounded with some regularity, packed sand impacted with stacked joints striking hard. The tungsten-yellow of incandescent light spotlighted in rings on cement, falling with mid-century shadows, lapping up and over the cuffs of Steve's loose pants. A glossy sheen of sweat was picked out on skin and wheat-colored t-shirt as the only brightness in the space outside of the Cold War palette that limned cool, cinderblock walls. Exertion brought out grit teeth, lips pulled back, brows crashing together like violent waves on a sick sea, head bowed with blond hair dark and sticking. Steve was alone on a set, in a scene, he'd played out before, heavy bags lined like body bags behind him, doomed to another death under wrapped knuckles. Gauze and tape kept bones close and secure, looped around the thumb and the back of the hand, twice around the wrist (loose, for uppercuts and angled hooks), three times around the hand and back down, X through the fingers, then over the mountain belt of knuckles. A ritual of transformation. But Steve hardly paid attention. His focus was sharp, but it wasn't outside of himself. It had no place in the close lungs of the little boxing gym. He was alone. Tension manifested itself in the physical transfer of energy, kinetic and hard-palmed, low on the bag, the rhythm picking up—the third movement of Mahler's Seventh Symphony, pluck so hard that the strings hit the wood in fortissimo, a Bartok pizzicato of hard muscle plucked by the brain. Steve's breath came hard through the nose and teeth, and his anger buzzed, a cellist on a rampage. Pepper's apology was surface. And I'm sorry it's all on you. Again. The grating of her mental presence, of her behind the door, too afraid of her own chaos to step out and make contact, a ghost in the crooked teeth of the graveyard of Steve's thoughts. The apology made him angrier, though it shouldn't have. He'd said too much. She'd left. Flashes of that night spun as loose film on a jarring projector, celluloid having slipped from the teeth of gears—a flapping serenade of woman and man, of Pepper's watery voice and Tony begging him to check on her. But she'd hid, and she'd left. Steve had done what he needed to do. It was for the best. The heavy bag creaked under fist. Her message to himself and Banner—an insult on paper, continued the procession of live-eyed memory. Sourness curdled on the back of Steve's tongue and teeth as the secret of Tony's whereabouts burned in the ugly wash of his stomach. They had a mole, it was necessary to take precautions to the extreme. It was for the best. He remembered he needed to get Peter talking to Bucky's friend, Jack, about Mr. Osborn and his experiments, which led him, as easily as if by the hand, to Ms. Stacy, to the sofa at Ms. Watson's apartment and the bloodless white of Peter's face as he was gripped by terror and misplaced guilt. It touched the shredded edges of patience stretched and snapped in the face of irresponsibility, uncaring, and a strong, modern need to be right; he had stepped back, but as the pop of veins along arms evidenced, he wasn't happy about it. But, it wasn't his place and it was for the best. The bag swung, the chains squeaked. Someone needed to oil them. Alone in the gym, Steve Rogers felt a new war born of ambiguity and the shuttered blinds of the blind, of both sides, break out in an internal battle of unforeseen bloodshed. He'd failed Sam. He'd brought him here. He hadn't introduced him and he needed him with a yoke of guilt burdening serum-wide shoulders. Sam could help Banner, but Steve kept asking, taking, asking, and Selina's own admonishment cropped up. He was harsh and judgmental, and he did not simply accept—flaws, or anything else. His expectations of others were too high to be met and he failed them himself, over and again. Eddie had shown him that. There had been guilt before, but it bred exponentially, displacing most other emotions and co-opting space where it could, until the night with Sharon on the sofa and the appropriation of grief was a failure of self and values, a lapse of all things Steve considered true. The hotel, the moments stolen with Preston—after losing Tony—and the burn of tea on the tongue, worse yet, rocks tied to the throat of his soul like Marley's chains, and dumped to the bottom of the Hudson River. How could he be Captain America—a role model, someone people looked up to to do the right thing, no matter the cost or circumstance—when he didn't even know what right was? When, in moments of loss, which life was comprised of as stepping stones, he went weak? How could he be the good man Erskine had wanted for his project? He loved Peggy, and what had he done? Steve hit the bag harder now. There was no room for sorrow. Heat pooled at the base of his skull. Complications multiplied the planes of the polygon rotating in his mind's eye. The terrible news of Ms. Stacy and Jason, details patched together into 28mm Pathescope film of the DC door's woes bred and loosed by Dr. Banner, and Steve stood here, this side of safety, beating fists into tearing canvas and slamming knuckle bones backward into the meat of the hand. It was for the best, but he hated it. Natasha was a clipped syllable held back by closed lips. Wanda the reality-rending fear of HYDRA—had she spoken with Natasha, as Steve had suggested?—Tony had become a well-worn worry that only experienced stress in the mess with Banner, in the moments when Steve had to hold himself back from yelling at the doctor. There was the Bucky that wasn't his own, who told him he didn't understand, that he didn't deserve absolution. The son he'd never had. Tony's derision. Banner's selfishness. The wrong words said to Sharon, to Peggy, to Selina, to everyone. It blurred together and he lost the images as he clenched his eyes closed, sweat stinging them with salt. Steve beat the bag to hell and in the last moment, canvas tore free, and the solidity gave way to air. It happened too quick, and Steve wondered about Bucky in the half-second that had his fist cutting through air and shifting his weight to instability. He went down on one knee as the world crashed around him as it did in the stretch of no-man's-land with the falling of shells. But he knew destruction. It was this—the building—he struggled with. Steve drew blood on his lip on impact. The helicarrier was going down in twisted metal and flame, Bucky was on top of him, and he… gave up. Captain America surrendered. It was the end of the line. Sound broke in the boxing gym. It was a breath fractured, ragged and hard, as Steve remained on the cement on one knee. He struggled to control it and the rising tide of tears he recognized bubbling up in his throat. He wasn't made for this world, this time or its people. He lacked integrity, compassion, the fingerprint of Erskine's touch heavy on his heart. The ice of his sleep still slid through his veins, making him cold, hard. He was a man who knew not willpower or righteous action. Eddie was right. Selina was. Everyone was. The people Steve had lost queued in his mind in a haunting that overwhelmed him; he felt himself break, and he didn't bother stopping it. He was alone. There was no steel of resolve, nothing to hang onto to drag himself up. He was on both knees now, hands on cold cement. He was no leader. He was alone and it was for the best. |