Dum Dum Dugan (byebyebourbon) wrote in thedoorway, @ 2014-11-04 00:14:00 |
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Entry tags: | timothy "dum dum" dugan (mcu) |
Who: Dum Dum Dugan & Gloria [SURNAME REDACTED]
When: 3 November 2014, late night
Where: Gloria's pie shop
What: Dum Dum visits an old flame
Rating: low
There was a weird politic to it all. Coming back after you'd left. One that hadn't ever sat right with Dum Dum Dugan. Of course he'd found Gloria, she'd been one of the first names he'd looked up once he'd found his feet and his way about the internet. But he hadn't sought her out. He wasn't sure he'd've sought any of them out had his old home not processed his arrival. Dum Dum was a man from another age, confronting a future he never wanted to know. Those who were still here had mourned him, celebrated him, and moved on. It wasn't right fair to either one of them to rejoin the fray. And he was tired of mourning ones who he shouldn't've seen go. But death was an old friend to an old soldier, what was harder was atrophy. Losing Peggy was uninmaginable, but no where near as hard as seeing the unsinkable Margaret Carter so lost and small. Maybe they all should've blown up the first Helicarrier, what felt like the peak of their achievement. But that isolationist bent in what had been one of the most boisterous personalities of 20th century spooking hadn't been agreed upon on all sides, and if the new sauce spoon shaped dent in an old trilby hatwas any indication, it hadn't been entirely appreciated. Maybe that was just how Gloria showed her love. But losing the star on that unshakable SHIELD so soon after that Detroit rascal he'd only it seemed cultivated for slaughter and watched his agency rot from within, it left Timothy Dugan, a long way from the cornfields of Idaho, or the dust of Dunkirk, wondering just how much more he had to lose, and just how much more until, like Steve Rogers, he was a relic living on time that should've gone to younger and better folk. As he sat in the booth in the pie shop tinted yellow by oil and age, with a pie brighter than anything else, save maybe the waitress' hair, it was even more clear how much just had. The video on the low def television in a high def world was ancient to everyone but him. Tom Brokaw as he remembered him at the Brandenburg Gate, scores of young people, dancing, destroying, and delirious. The Berlin Wall, Brokaw had said , awesome symbol of Europe's division has long been a relic of the cold war, though still a potent one, now it's become a museum piece. Dum Dum remembered building and maintaining that symbol. Now he wondered if they weren't the same. He didn't like thinking. "Hey Gloria." Dum Dum reached out as the shop-owner passed, wrapping an arm around a waist that was rounder than he recalled, and a bit less steady. She set down the orange handled pot and held herself against the table. "I'm not giving you another cup, Dugan. You'll get gassy." There was a look. There had always been a look with her. It made him feel younger for a moment, and then ancient as dust. "Nah, darling. Not that." They hadn't been a great love, though they'd been a dynamic partnership: complementary, magnetic, but just different enough that they'd been a disastrous experiment in wedded bliss. It had mostly been little squabbles like the plastic doll turned peace offering he had brought until it came to starting a family. They hadn't been married long though the friendship had persisted as far as Dum Dum Dugan knew. They'd each moved on a dozen times since then. But she slid into the booth as easily as his arm slid around her shoulder. "Just, this don't feel the sort of news a man should watch alone." Dum Dum had learned about the Berlin Wall, of course, as well as he'd learned about all history he'd missed. But seeing it now, there was a bittersweet feel, as if an era were coming to an end. And though he'd been trying to ignore that same lesson for weeks with Peggy Carter, he might, for tonight, have found someone to help him through. |