Maryanne Elizabeth Walker (maryanne_walker) wrote in spinningcompass, @ 2013-08-29 21:45:00 |
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Maryanne often found herself in the pub late at night, after she'd slept her allotted four hours. Or before. It didn't matter. Tonight was no different. Everybody had their fill of booze, and had gone to their beds. It was a good night to start. Hopefully it would heal them both. At the very least she hoped it would do Steve some good. And that was how they found themselves. She parked in the middle of a table legs folded beneath her. As indecent as ever, with a simple dark purple shirt, with a light purple bullseye in the middle, and some extremely short shorts. Her shoes were somewhere, but she'd bother with them later. Maryanne was staring at one Steven Rodgers, seated properly in one of the chairs. He was also known as Captain America in their little section of the universe. He was a man to be admired in her book. But he was also troubled. And she was out to do what she could for him. "I’m sorry. You don’t have to be sorry. It’s done. I’m okay. I look okay don’t I? That doesn’t matter, I shouldn’t have done it. If you had more control over the hallucinations then I’d say you have something to feel bad for. You don’t so you don’t. Besides I was a guy. How was you to know I wasn’t some Nazi bastard ready to take over.. Um… whatever they were trying to take over… History isn’t my strong suit right now. I should have more control. I shouldn’t let that happen, I’m not at war, no one here is trying to hurt me. I should know that. And...I thought you were Hydra. But I thought Loki was there too. Well, that’s what you’re here for, is to get that control back. And Loki is here. He’s just not… I don’t even know what he’s up to. I don’t trust this one as much as I did the one from the train. No, I thought he was...behind it. Even though Loki never had anything to do with Hydra. Everything was getting mixed up, I didn’t know which war I was fighting. That’s probably your mind trying to mesh things together so it’ll be easier to process. It’s… There’s only so much fucked up our minds can take, until it just tries to play catch up. That’s what yours is doing to you right now. It’s not anything you can really keep from happening. It’s just a matter of… It’s easier to break things up like that if you try and focus on the cause. If you force your mind to separate the two. I don’t want to separate them or think about them, I want them to leave me alone. You have to. I know it sucks. Trust me I know how bad it sucks. Otherwise you’re still going to blend the two. And neither are going to leave you alone. But… let’s not start here. Let’s try… What first comes to mind? You share and I will too. That way it’ll be fair. And it wont be just you talking to me. Bucky. And Erskine. Okay, Bucky first. Tell me about him. He was my best friend. He died because of me. I seriously doubt that he died because of you. Okay, you shared a little. I’ll pay my part. My first husband, I say that like there was a second, his name was Jason Callina. And he definitely died because of me. We were fighting together, had to overtake this train on a mountainside. I was supposed to have his back and protect him but when one of the Hydra men found him I didn’t help, I gave him my shield even though he didn’t know how to use it. When he was shot he got thrown backwards and out a hole that had been blasted in the side of the train. He held on for a while but I didn’t get to him fast enough. Why definitely? You can do a lot of things, Steve, but you can’t control gravity. There was a list made. With the remaining mutants names on it. My father made sure my name was on it. I thought we were careful. I thought being away from where I knew would keep us safe. I even kept my maiden name. It wasn’t enough. They found me. And because he was seen as a mutant sympathizer… They didn’t hold back when they came after me. I was shot, clean through… Low enough that they took out three instead of just two. Because he was kneeling in front of me kissing my lower stomach. And you can’t control the government or it’s agents. I could have done it differently, could have planned the raid later, when the train wouldn’t have been on a mountainside, I could have just shot the man coming for him, could have run out and stood in front of him with my shield, could have gotten to him faster, pulled the side of the train in instead of trying to climb out….I made so many mistakes and he paid for them. And...I still don’t know how to live with that. Or without him. Mistakes are what make you human. You can’t read minds, you can’t see the future. And who’s to say that even with your awesome strength that you would have been able to move iron. That’s what those trains were made out of. Not steel, not the crap they use these days. But Iron. It wasn’t the government. It was a religious group called the Purifiers. I am not human. The man that tried to kill me stunk. I tracked him for three days. I should have scented him long before he pulled the trigger. I should have heard the shot, it wasn’t silenced, and it was high caliber. I should have pushed him out of the way. I shouldn’t have slept with him while I was in season, I shouldn’t… There are a lot of regrets, a lot of old things that I can’t change. What’s horrible is with the way everything is now, I don’t know if I would. Jason was taken out of that world. He lost his mutation, and he didn’t have to live through the hell that I did. So I hope… since he wasn’t one of us anymore, that he found peace and a place in heaven. Sometimes I wish I could. Go back. Before the war, when me and Buck were just two broke kids living in a tiny apartment in Brooklyn with no heat, no radio, and a stove that only worked when we could afford the gas. We didn’t even have two beds, we took turns on a mattress on the floor unless it was real cold and we’d just share. He coulda done a lot better if he moved out of the city, even had some distant family in Indiana, but he knew I’d never be okay without him. But then I always feel like such a terrible man, ‘cause I know Peggy loves me and I love her and Stevie and this is the only place I’ll ever get to be with them and if I hadn’t been in the war I never woulda even met her. Then again maybe that woulda been better off for her anyway, I’m not being any good for her now. You’re here now. Getting help the only way we can. There aren’t medications for this. There’s just… surviving with it. Not that either one of us could take the meds if they had any. Most likely they’d work five seconds and that would be it. You’re a good man Steve. You gave your life to do things that… Most would turn tail and run from. You gave hope to people that had so very little. You made scary nights less scary. On just the knowledge that there was someone that is good deep down to his very core when there was so much bad. Just on your stories alone, you kept me going when I wanted to quit, to give up and just die. You’re an important man, more so than I think you’ll ever realize. I never did any of that. I never lived in a world where...mutants existed. All I did was kill men who were fighting for their country, get people I loved killed, crash a plane and abandon the people who cared for me, fight a bunch of aliens who didn’t even have control of themselves and destroy downtown Manhattan. I’m not that special. Have you seen the movie that got the girls all riled up? We existed. You just didn’t know about us. Nick Fury knew. The Council probably did too. We just weren’t known to the world yet. But SHIELD was seeing the threat. But I’ll be honest I don’t think you could say anything that would change the way I feel about you, Steve. I’m probably just as hard headed as you are. If not more. I couldn’t watch it, them, not the ones I was in. I’m not as special as everyone seems to think. I wish I was but I’m...not that perfect. You should watch the Avengers one. Especially at the end. You’ll… Never mind, I have feelings about things that SHIELD has harbored and made happen but they shouldn’t color how you feel about them. Seeing that movie scared me a little. And it’s not about you being perfect. Nobody is perfect. It’s about the gargantuan balls you have to do things that would make other men turn coat or run from. It’s about your heart, and the sweet look you get when… I don’t want to embarrass you, but if it weren’t for the whole school principal vibe you give off I would have probably had your poster over my bed instead of Tony’s. I lived it, I know what they did. And what if one day I did want to turn coat and run? Even if it was just running from something someone should probably run from no one would look at me the same, I’d be a disappointment. And even that, I can’t just be...a man. I’m a symbol that has all of these ideas attached to it that I can’t really live up to. They can be scary people at times, Steve. Especially with the secrets they hold. Wanting and doing are two different things. But.. no one says you have to be the symbol. The symbol exists already. The stories are already there. You don’t have to build more, or live up to the ones that are already there. Do what you feel is right, because you, more than anyone else here, deserves that choice. And here? All I ask of you is when it’s needed that you stand with me, and help me keep the people safe that can’t… That can’t take the abuse. And that doesn’t happen often. There have been Zombies, there were Wyverns and the robots. And that’s in the whole year that I’ve been here. And even in that request, you can even stand on the sidelines. Run the plays, because I’m a crap leader, my diplomatic skills are nonexistent, and you’re prettier than me. How can I not? You said it yourself, just the idea of me did all of those things for you. How would you had felt if, back where you were, all of a sudden you got word that I wasn’t doing it anymore? That I was just going to be another man on the street with a normal job and a normal life? I would have felt like you deserved it. Who doesn’t. And I would have loved to see you achieve it, because that would mean maybe, maybe, for some of us that are different, that we could have a normal job and a normal life. Even if it wasn’t within reach of my generation. At least it was there. It’s wrong, probably, but I think of you.. Like us. Except you were made. And if they accept you, why wouldn’t they accept us?" Maryanne hadn't realized she was crying until a warm thumb, kindly, brushed the tears away. That was all it took for her to launch herself across the short space to wrap her arms around his neck. Steve didn't fight her. He'd simply wrapped his arms around her and rested his chin on her shoulder. "I think that's a stopping point don't you?" All she got was a nod, but neither broke the embrace. |