InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "No wai!"

sam_thefalcon (sam_thefalcon) wrote in avengers_logs,
@ 2018-04-06 20:09:00

Entry tags:

-complete, sam wilson, stephen strange

The Falcon Has Landed
Who: Sam Wilson, Doctor Strange
What: The Welcome Wagon Cometh
Where: Sam's apartment
When: After Hulkfest 2018
Rating: Green for now

Sam put down the machine pistol he'd been cleaning. He put down the barrel brush. He stood up, ready for action, surveying the room though he knew it was empty. Something was wrong. Something he couldn't put his finger on, but his instincts had rarely played him false.

The coffee table in front of him was covered with several layers of newspaper. On it lay a thoroughly-cleaned and reassembled Steyr SPP machine pistol and its disassembled twin, still only partially cleaned. A bottle of solvent, a can of oil, a small mound of soiled cleaning patches, and a large plastic bag of clean new patches, as well as a plastic case containing the cleaning kit were scattered across the table.

The light coming through the windows hadn't changed. Nor had the sounds of the city drifting up from street level many floors below. The scent of cleaning solution filled his nose, which was only reasonable. No creak of floorboards or soft footfalls on carpet. No air movement where none was to be expected.

Nothing out of place. Nothing unexpected. Everything was as it should be. And yet, it was all wrong somehow. It was like the opposite of deja vu. Instead of looking at the room and feeling that he'd experienced this moment before, it felt like it was all completely new. Like he'd been shunted into someone else's life without warning.

One corner of his mouth lifted in a smirk of amusement at his own thoughts. "'You may tell yourself, this is not my beautiful house,'" he murmured. "'You may tell yourself, this is not my beautiful wife.'"

He moved silently through the apartment, clearing each room. No assassins lurked in the apartment. The doors and windows were all closed and locked. He was alone in the--in his--apartment. He returned to the living room.

The feeling that something was off didn't fade, but nothing overt happened. Sam resumed his seat on the sofa, though he remained ready to spring up again for a time. Still nothing happened. He sighed, then picked up the weapon and the barrel brush and went back to work.

After a time he sensed he was not alone. He looked up. "My oh my, the circus is in town."

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sam_thefalcon
2018-04-10 04:20 am UTC (link)

Sam absorbed Strange's words without comment. Madness inducing.

He found that unlikely. It was a common trope in genre fiction, the conceit that the average person "wasn't ready" to know about...whatever. Vampires. Modern magic. Stargates. Time Travel. In reality, it allowed the storytellers to maintain the pretense that the story was happening in the real world but people simply weren't aware of it.

Sadly, it happened in the real world too. The powers that be kept secrets ostensibly for the good of the public they served, but too often in order to protect themselves from the reaction of that public if they knew what their alleged servants were really up to. He'd seen it more often than he liked to think about.

The public--the "average person" was far more resilient than they were usually given credit for. Human history was full of world-ending disasters, or at least disasters that ended the world as countless people had known it. Whole tribes, peoples, even nations had been destroyed, enslaved, or scattered. The survivors endured. They clung to their faiths and customs, or found new ones. But they endured, and they rebuilt.

He wasn't going to rock the boat. He had no proof, and it wouldn't accomplish anything to tell the world at large what he knew. But he had no doubt the world would find it a nine-day wonder and then shrug and move on.

"Okay," Sam said. "Those of us in the know, on the network. Is there something specific we need to be doing? Or are we just on call for when and if we're needed?"

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