Quicklog, Stark Tower: Flash T/Steve R
[War, famine, poverty—they all bred instability, a wilderness that thrived in urban pockets, squalid tenements, and bunkers; they made a world where nothing ever calmed or settled, where you moved from one fire to the next, sand between fingers and sweat stinging eyes.—Steve had come of age in a world where all three were but certainties—past, present, and future, but this wasn't any of those—this new future, it didn't have the clear lines of the sepia-splashed past, and the Man Out of Time struggled sometimes with the verdant shades of gray he was meant to occupy. He struggled to know what to call this... A snake growing in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s belly, a viper in a nest, and Carnage, a symbiote, a thing that leeched onto others, sucking down their violence, gorging on gore. And now Gwen was the latest casualty.—What could this be but a war?
The man was in his old quarters in Stark Tower, strange as that was, and he was trying to pull the threads of the past couple of days together to make a picture that made sense from one angle or another. After the hotel, after Bucky and all of this nonsense with HYDRA he was still puzzling out, after the hunt for Dr. Banner, that ended, miserably, in nothing but dead ends in barren stretches of Canadian territories and no word yet, this came as a blow, one thing following the others in perfect time.—Steve had lost and lost again, and this wasn't about him, but at this point in his life, a soldier, he should've been immune to that claw of grief that gutted you, but he wasn't.
Gwen. Young. And he'd told her he'd help her with Carnage, before he thought better of it, thought it would be best if the 'kids' took care of it, if they had something to bond over, to work for—and now, here they were. He was still sparse on the details, but he'd known enough young men and women, bright eyes snuffed out for something bigger than them, to know he didn't need them.—He knew Gwen did what she thought was right. That she made choices, and he couldn't take those away from her now, simply because he suffered sorrow. And he tried to remember that. Just like he remembered, after losing Bucky, the last thing he'd wanted to do was sit around amid reminders, and it was because of that and a strong muscle of compassion that Steve invited Flash to the Tower.
And an honest hope that the other man could help, especially with Jason and Helena being so hellbent on exacting their revenge, both of them Gotham-born, with not enough understanding of S.H.I.E.L.D. to know, what they wanted, they couldn't have. Not really.
He was nursing a cup of coffee, bent over his journal, graphite shining along the crescent of his palm, blond hair finally short—finally 'in style'—plain blue t-shirt and khakis. His phone was askew, to the side on the coffee table, some vintage remake, by the cream sofa near the door. The entire apartment was low-lit and quiet, without the harsh fluorescence that decorated the rest of Tony's pride and joy, and only a laptop cracked open nearby streaming the camera from the security desk to tell him Flash had arrived.—Surprised to see the young man walking, Steve went to the door, just as the elevator pinged just down the corridor.
His smile was earnest as he stepped just over the threshold. He held out his hand for a shake.] Hi, Flash. Come on in.