Who: Luke and Jack What: Two bros try to have a nice lunch and then they get blasted instead. Where: Some restaurant near Oscorp. When: During the Oscorp Boom. Warnings/Rating: None?
All in all, Marvel wasn’t proving to be so bad-- yet, at least. Wren’s worry about super dangerous spy missions were unfounded because Luke wasn’t doing anything of the sort, and honestly, he didn’t think he was cut out to be a spy anyway. S.H.I.E.L.D. had been more routine than expected and while being in such close proximity to a bunch of superheroes made it hard to keep his head down and go about his business, he was doing a pretty good job so far. Okay, so it wasn’t very exciting, but it paid the bills and at least Wren wouldn’t make herself sick worrying about him getting killed. She was still working in the Gatsby door, he knew, and since she hadn’t said anything he was inclined to believe that it really was just dancing; but even so, he felt better knowing Evie was looking out for her until he could get there and see what it was about for himself.
Maybe, just this once, he was one of the luckier ones. No one really important had been left behind, he and Wren had a place to live, and they were finally free of Gotham. None of this was what he would have chosen but, hey, bright side.
He still worried, though. He worried about Max. He worried about Jack. But then again he always worried, and maybe it was for nothing. Either way, he was looking forward to seeing Jack again, after all this ‘being pulled into fictional worlds’ nonsense had finally begun to die down. Familiar faces were nice, after all; they made things feel a little more normal. And there was really nothing more normal than lunch, and despite this being Marvel New York, it appeared just like any other city in the middle of the day. It was sunny, comfortably warm in a spring sort of way, and they had a table outside with a view of the sidewalk and street beyond.
“So.” Luke took a sip of his water and leaned back a little in his chair. “Have you gotten used to all this yet?”
Jack smiled, just a little. "No," he said.
It was truthful, but in no way catastrophic. Much like Luke, he didn't feel the punishment that some obviously were being forced to go through. Aside from his friends, all of whom were here, he had no one to hope would come with him to this new world. He'd incurred no fresh losses through the transition, which was a rarity. If he didn't know better, he might assume mercy on the hotel's part, but there had been no mercy for Max, alone with only a scratchy telephone to connect her to her daughter. How long they might be here, how much of Amanda's growing up she might have to experience through a dismally out of date phone line, nobody knew. It was sobering in the face of otherwise good luck in this strange new world. "Not everyone is as lucky as us," he said, and Luke would know who he was talking about. "And I guess that holds me back from really settling in. It's hard to believe this is it." The hotel liked to pull the rug out from under them far too much for Jack to really trust it.
He leaned back a little, picking up his water glass, leaving a ring of condensation behind on the table. "I'm can't say it's a terrible change, though." He smiled. "I'm not going to miss the desert. It's nice to be somewhere with seasons. And to be responsible for all my time and my entire headspace."
Sure, there had been times when the door had offered a convenient escape. That hadn't made up for getting murdered and brought back from the dead, or the hardships they'd undergone while forced to share their beings with someone else. He'd generally gotten along alright with Jason, and seen in him some of the uglier parts of his own personality along with some of the better ones. They hadn't been entirely dissimilar, after all. "It feels like things are more...normal, again," he said, adding, ruefully, "Even if we are in a comic book." He shrugged a shoulder. "I don't know. Maybe we can build real lives here. It's a nice fantasy, anyway."
Maybe they could. Maybe he could try to get to know Max properly again, and spend more time with Evie. Maybe their jobs would stay dangerous without becoming dire or requiring a faked death. He wasn't an optimist, per se, but the darkest parts of his life were starting to feel more distant in the past few years. Maybe a new world was what he needed to cut it all loose, and to be different. The sun was warm on his clothes, the glass was cool and wet, and the faint breeze was soft. This was as real a world as the one they'd come from. He was warily, cautiously optimistic about their chances. Of course, with the hotel, there was no way to really know.
He knew who Jack was referring to without having to ask. Gus, who was fond of both his grandfather and Amanda, would inevitably wonder why he couldn’t see them anymore, but Luke understood that was nothing compared to Max being unable to see her daughter. Phone calls weren’t enough. It made him all the more grateful that Gus and Lia were here; he wasn’t sure how he and Wren would have coped otherwise and he was glad they wouldn’t have to find out. “I know,” he admitted. “I never thought I’d actually call us lucky, but all things considered we are.” He shrugged. “Wren seems to think it’s permanent, that we’re stuck here. But I don’t know. At this point, anything could happen.” He didn’t like the whole ‘wait and see’ vibe he got from all this but, since they clearly couldn’t get back to Vegas, there wasn’t much else to be done.
“I don’t think I’ll miss it either,” he said of Vegas. “New York isn’t so bad. And you’re right, it’s nice to not have to share time and a brain with someone else. No more getting dragged into Bruce and Selina’s messes.” That was definitely a bonus, even if in a strange sort of way he had, god forbid, become sort of fond of the older man. “Marvel is a lot better than DC. Could you imagine if we’d ended up in Gotham?” He pulled a face and shook his head. “I think their villains are less crazy here. Either way, living a little while we’re here couldn’t hurt.”
Of course, he knew better than to let himself get too comfortable. Each day wasn’t a guarantee, after all, but he tried to push that aside instead of dwelling on it and focused on something else instead. “Have you talked to Evie yet?” He tried very, very hard to keep it casual, but there was a hint of something expectant in the way he watched him.
"It wouldn't be the worst that could happen," he said, smiling a little. "I'm not going to be too optimistic, but I don't think I would mind staying here. At least for a while." He hadn't lived in New York for a long time, any version of it. There had been a several months-long stay when he had been travelling with Cerise. It had been fall then, not summer, and the skies had mostly been dingy gray, but the trees were briefly an explosion of color, and he could sit with her and with a book in cheap coffee shops. He had worked an easy job, as he had at all their stops, driving a truck for a construction company. It had been a very simple kind of life, no espionage, and, for that brief period of a few years, no death. But he'd never been able to shake it all the way, not then, not now, and it had come back.
New York had been a place lived simply, so he had good memories of it despite its many cons. "I want to visit some of the museums," he said, smiling. "See how different they are. I wonder if the superheroes have painted anything on the walls?" The very thought of landing in Gotham made him groan. "God, I would have moved. There's a lot of good that could be done in Gotham, but I think they have enough people on that project without us."
The waitress was weaving back toward them between the tables, and he watched her as she came, idly. He was comfortable here, glad to be sitting with his friend. This, he realized, was relief. It was finally sinking in how much he could have lost in this transition, and how much he had not.
Behind his head, a block away, a shining spire pierced past the rest of the skyscrapers. He'd taken in the altered skyline when he first arrived, with Stark Tower and the Oscorp building the most prominent additions. Stark's edifice was overt, flashy and ostentatious. Oscorp, on the other hand, was modern and elegant, so much so that there was a hint of clean imperiousness in it. It was imposing, holding its height over the rest of the buildings. He was starting to get used to it, but only just.
"Evie?" he asked. His smile was tinged with surprise. "I did, I sent her a message to check in." Then the surprise dropped away, swiftly replaced by a knowing, friendly suspicion. "Why do you ask?"
And then, behind his back, Oscorp started to shake.
Luke smiled a little, pleased that he wasn’t the only one who didn’t mind their change of surroundings. It was familiar without the memories their New York held, and while that might have been a downside for some, he didn’t mind. “It’s okay. I’ll be optimistic and say that maybe the hotel is cutting us a break. Just this once.” Of course, it had brought them here and taken them from their homes, but there were a lot of ways in which it could have been worse. The thought of museums or sightseeing hadn’t even occurred to him, and he laughed at the realization. “That’s not a bad idea,” he said. “Who knows what might be different here. It’s the same, but it’s not.” As for Gotham, he nodded his agreement. There was no way he would have stayed, no way he could have stayed. Not there, not with Wren and the kids to boot. “I’ve had enough of Gotham to last me a lifetime. I think they can handle it without us.” He pulled a face. He didn’t want to play hero that badly.
The differences had taken some getting used to, and even now he did a double-take when he looked around, noticing buildings like Start Tower and Oscorp that hadn’t been back home and that he had, until recently, only seen in comic books and movies. But a part of him thought it was pretty cool, the part that still remembered what it was like to be a teenager and idolize superheroes.
“Oh. Good.” He made a mental note to tell Wren, but then Jack was asking why and this, right here, was why he’d make a horrible spy; he was a terrible liar. If it wasn’t in person he could manage it, but he had a hard time lying to the faces of those he knew, even if it was harmless. “I was just wondering,” he shrugged. “We’re all kind of in this together, you know? We should all stay close.” He wished Wren was here; she’d have done a much better job.
But a murmur had risen up around them, attentions being caught table by table. It was a slow thing, starting with one person and spreading, and he was saved from any more awkward explanations as it finally reached them and he too looked up at the building in question. He frowned. “What the hell…?”
There was no time to respond. As the building behind them began to shake, it ocurred to Jack how close they were, how little room there was on this narrow street if the building came down. He set his glass down and stood so sharply that he nearly tipped the table over. "Luke, we need to go." He turned back to him, then glanced rapidly around the restaurant, at people all realizing at once the same thing they had. "Now."
He began sliding past him around the edge of the table, but it was already too late. Halfway around the table’s edge, Oscorp shuddered. A dull sound reached his ears, low and heavy, like a faraway sonic boom. Then something was warping the air near the building, then warping outward, larger, growing closer by the second. It came toward them with blistering speed, roiling and splitting the air. The scent of ozone hit his nose, harsh and strong. There would be no time for running, not now. "Down," he said, turning back to Luke, eyes wide. He stepped quickly between Luke and the wave, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him toward the cement, partially under the table, as paltry a defense as there ever was. "Down, get down!"
Curiosity quickly became alarm, and when Jack stood with the declaration that they needed to go, Luke followed suit. He wasn’t quite sure where to go, but away seemed a good start, and he began to back up, a glance over his shoulder to figure out the fastest route to put distance between them and Oscorp. But it was too late; that strange sound, like a muffled explosion, reached his ears, and he turned back in time to see… something coming their way. He had no idea what it was but he could see it, and if he could see it, then there was a strong possibility it was about to ram into them like a tidal wave.
“Jack--” He had no idea what he was going to say, not that it mattered. He stumbled, and when Jack pulled him down he went down, throwing an arm over his head as though that might somehow protect him. Around them, people were crying out, some trying to take cover and some attempting to run, but then his ears were filled with a sound like electricity, a thunderbolt right next to him, and he didn’t hear anything else. When it hit, it felt like electricity, and distantly he was aware of somehow being on his back and he tried, desperately, to curl in on himself. It was chaotic confusion and he tried to cry out, to say something, but he couldn’t breathe, much less speak, and all he could do was squeeze his eyes shut and wait for it, whatever it was, to end.
Jack felt like every atom in his body was sizzling when the pulse went through. He hit the ground hard, rolling almost into the street, coming to rest on his stomach.
He didn't know where Luke was. He couldn't even open his eyes to see. He couldn't breathe, let alone shout. Every square inch of his skin was on fire. If he had to guess what it felt like to have a ghost go through you, it would be something like this, something meshing with your cells and tearing at them as it went. There was no real reaction in the moment, no opportunity to string coherent thoughts together. He could only endure it, curling involuntarily against the ground. He didn't feel the gritty cement on his skin, or the warmth of the sun anymore. There was just the moment where the pulse passed through and it felt like his bones were burning, and then it was past them.
He moaned out what remained of a breath, then gasped in a fresh one, coughing sharply. "God," he managed, before dissolving into another barking cough as he tried to take in breath. He lifted his head, pushing up. Luke, there he was. Breathing? Yes, breathing. That done, he could drop his head and try to catch his breath.
Pain wasn’t an unfamiliar sensation, but he’d never felt anything like this. Trying to figure out what was happening required more thought than he was capable of, and even when Luke no longer felt like he was being electrified and burned alive simultaneously, the pain lingered. It became an ache beneath his skin, and a stranger sensation he couldn’t quite place, but he found that he could breathe. At least he wouldn’t suffocate. He tried to gulp in air too quickly and ended up coughing, rolling onto his side fully until he could regain control and breathe properly. “What the hell,” he wheezed, only half aware of the other people around him. Of course, just when he’d started to think Marvel wasn’t so bad, something like this had to happen.
He pushed himself up onto all fours, albeit shakily, and leaned against the table. “Jack?” He coughed again and rubbed at his mouth with the back of his hand. “Are you okay?”
Jack coughed a few more times, sliding down to sit on the ground. The rest of the restaurant's patrons were in similar recovery mode. In the distance, he thought he heard sirens. "I'm okay," he said, breathlessly. He watched Luke, but aside from a similar lack of breath, he looked fine. "You?" he asked, his voice still thick.
Even as his breath came back to him, something felt wrong. A blast like that couldn't be purely for pain and show, could it? Dread was beginning to flow through him. Something was off, crawling in him, knocked out of place. He wasn't coughing up blood or blown to pieces, so it wasn't as simple as fatality. Only time would tell any lingering effects.
His goal was to keep breathing. The pain had to fade eventually, right? Maybe he’d just hit the ground too hard or something. Right. That had to be it. Luke nodded, ignoring the sensation of something under his skin shifting, even though it half-made him want to claw at his own skin. “Fine. I’m fine. I-- what was that?” It was more of a rhetorical question, though, because he didn’t expect Jack to know the answer. Some freak accident, maybe. He tried to look around but it made him dizzy, and so he kept his gaze forward. The sound of sirens, though, made him want to move. He hated hospitals. He didn’t want to go to the hospital. He clung to the table, tried to stand, and ended up sitting down again. “Damn it.”
Jack watched Luke try and fail to get up with dismay. "Stay down," he said, his voice still low and out of breath. "Don't try to get up." He wasn't too keen on going to the hospital either, but in the state they were in, trying to move too quickly was only going to make things worse. He slumped forward. "I don't know what that was, but," a huffed, exasperated a laugh, "I didn't like it." He groaned as something tweaked painfully in his chest, then settled. A twisted nerve? He looked down the street, then back at his friend. They were lucky to be alive, lucky to be sitting here. He shook his head, putting a hand to his temples. Christ, what a headache. His muscles were still twitching on occasion. He wanted to get up and run as much as he wanted to sit and rest, that unsettled feeling deep inside making him want to move, as if he could escape it if he only ran fast enough. The ambulances were in sight, now, and Jack sighed. It appeared they were going to the hospital, whether they liked it or not.
"I am never, ever saying that things...seem okay," Jack muttered, bitter as could be, still vaguely displaced from his own body. It would sink in, what had just happened, but not yet. Not when the stinging had yet to fade, and his lungs still felt like he'd been breathing smoke. "Ever again."
Normally he would have protested, insisting that he was fine, but Luke was too winded to be able to come up with the necessary energy. Instead, he just exhaled. “Okay.” Leaning against the table was good. It offered support, and as much as staying still made him impatient, like his limbs would snap at any moment, at least the world didn’t spin that way. “No, I didn’t like it either,” he agreed with a wince. He stared, trying to figure out if Jack was really okay or if he was just saying so; he decided it was probably the latter. There could be lasting effects. It could be some biohazard thing, and what if they were all infected? He started to panic, maybe, just a little, but he wouldn’t have been able to run even if he’d tried. Besides, he wouldn’t leave Jack behind. If he was going to the hospital, well, Luke was too.
There was nothing funny about the situation. Nothing at all, but he laughed anyway, unable to help it. He laughed, and he laughed, and it turned into pained wheezing that had him doubled over in seconds. “N-Neither am I,” he managed to spit out. “We jinxed it.” The ambulances had stopped, and EMTs were spilling out with stretchers and bags to tend to the injured. He sighed, but there was no use fighting. Once he was at the hospital and they determined that he was fine, that they were both fine, they could make their escape.