nightcathedral | Recent Entries

By now, most people in New York are used to superheroes flying through the city. One of the Avengers hovering outside of someone's bedroom window at an apartment building in Brooklyn, just barely after sunrise... is a little less common, probably.

Carol knocks on Anya's window again, a little louder, and looks down at the pair of hipsters who are watching her from across the street. She waves.

"My friend's asleep," she explains. "Or possibly not home." Pause. "I promise this isn't an Avenger problem, despite the costume. Everything's fine... civilians..."

Even if this is the second apartment she's visited this morning, because it turns out Anya's moved since Carol went to space. She freaked out the elderly British man who now lives in that apartment, and had to call Jess for her actual address. This day is already going so well for Carol.

She knocks again, harder. Come on, spiderbaby. Up and at 'em.

lastblackhawk

Zinda, to be perfectly honest, is not sure what happened to her. She knows where she is - definitely New York, no confusing that - but not why, and she's not entirely sure she buys the when. This is different from the Manhattan she knows, sure, in a dozen ways she's noticed already and probably more she hasn't been able to count yet, but... she can't have missed a whole sixty years. That can't be right.

She wandered around a bit trying to make sense of it, and finally ended up in a bar near the waterside - military bar, lot of old vets and younger soldiers, the kind of place she feels right at home. Either someone from her command will track her down and pull her out sooner or later... or they won't. And she'll deal with that when it comes.

Right now, though, she's getting happily drunk on a half dozen young soldier's tabs, flirting with all of them absolutely shamelessly. Zinda's always been good at making the most of her circumstances.

usavatar

Apparently it doesn't matter to nurses or orderlies if you're Captain America or Captain Kangaroo - Steve had to ask about that one - if you're hurt, you're a patient, and if you're a patient, you get wheeled to the front door. He had to smile in the face of the scowling woman in nurse's scrubs who made the comparison. Her expression reminded him of his mother.

So he submitted. He probably would have tired himself out making the exit doors. He's still stitched, bandaged, bruised, scraped. Breathing too deep pulls at his insides.

The press is at the court-mandated distance outside the exit. He holds up a hand, getting the orderly to stop with a quiet "Please."

He levers himself out of the chair as the man protests, surprised, and walks for the door. It takes effort to regulate his gait, and he angles for steady and slow. Solid. He has to be Captain America, battered or not.

Standing and waiting for his ride, whoever it is - Natasha was vague - is hard. And hurts.

Being injured is really irritating.

performedperfectly

Maya groans, tries to roll to her side, get her hands under her. She needs to get to her computer, she needs to- to-

She can't remember what she's trying to do, but there's a bullet in her gut and her blood's all over the floor and Tony needs to know, he...

Something tugs at her arm, and she blinks in confusion at it for a second until her eyes focus on the IV in her forearm, the medical gown and white sheets and the handcuff on her other wrist and...

Handcuff aside, she barks out a laugh, too harsh in her dry throat, and drops her head back against the thin pillow. Her stomach aches and burns, but it's somewhat dull, numbed by painkillers, not immediate and burning and like something's scooped out her insides and replaced it with molten metal, and the pain doesn't even matter. She's not dead. Whatever else she has to face now - Killian or Tony or the authorities or who the hell cares - that feels like a victory.

pipinghotmess

So here's the thing about fresh starts: they actually don't happen all at once. It really seems like they should - the year turns, you blow up all your stuff, pay someone to rip out the center of your chest, and move across the country - but it turns out that you don't know the new place well enough to walk it in the dark, your chest aches in unfamiliar ways, and you still can't sleep. It figures.

More annoying, his workshop's empty and too pristine. No suits to tinker with, the bots aren't due to arrive until later today, and all his unfinished projects had been moved to Malibu months ago. Tony doesn't linger there long, just snags a toolbox and heads down to the garage, where he pretty quickly ends up under the hood of a random car, streaked with oil and surrounded by engine parts.

It's really anyone's guess how long he's been here at this point, but the sun's up, so it's probably safe to say it's been a while.

usavatar

He didn't risk the trek back to his own place, not after the fiasco that led to the city-wide blackout that will probably go down in Boston's history books as the most mysterious power loss in fifty years. Who knows when they'll get the power back on. Usually, that wouldn't be a problem. Well - usually, if it wasn't mid-December with a storm warning.

It's coming down fast while Steve pokes up the fire, wearing a set of Olivia's oversized pajamas that manage to fit, more or less. His own clothes are a drool and blood-sprayed ruin, taken by lab techs for help with analysis of the dead thing they're still trying to classify.

The fire is a synthetic log, which he's never seen before - and it's hard to resist prodding the thing until it falls apart, despite the fact that the instructions say not to do exactly that. He holds his hand over the flames to test the heat the thing gives off.

The room itself is soft with candlelight and the orange tremor from the fireplace, corners shadowed. He looks over at the couch and Olivia, and can't help thinking that she looks a bit like a painting, curled there in this lighting. He takes in the sight of her until he realizes that silent staring is probably awkward. "They make substitutes for everything these days, don't they?"

usavatar

He's still seeing the glitter of things from the other side, and it's giving him a headache. They said it would fade, eventually - but eventually doesn't do Steve a whole lot of good when he's standing in a conference room shared by the universes, in that mutual space created by the machine.

There's no sitting. No chance. Instead he stands by the door to his - "his" - side of things, hands clasped behind his back, expression as stony as an MP on guard. He insisted on a uniform, and given the circumstances, Broyles agreed without hesitation.

Steve half-expected this ever since the file on the Screamers crossed his path. That doesn't mean he has to like the Other Side demanding his help, or this side pressuring him for compliance that he would have given with a simple request.

nolimitation

( And the pressure in our bodies that echoes up above it is exploding )

nolimitation

It's nearly three in the morning when Olivia slips out of her room and heads down to the lab where Tony Stark had a sensory deprivation tank set up for her. She moves quickly and quietly, and doesn't bother switching on the lights when she enters the lab, leaving the blue glow of the monitors around the room to light her way - she's hoping that the less she does, the less JARVIS will take notice of her, and maybe he won't wake anyone to tell them what she's doing before it's too late. There are letters on her bed to Steve, to Jane, to Tony and Bruce, and between that and her absence, and whatever security cameras she's sure are monitoring this room, that'll have to do to explain where she's gone.

She eases the door quietly shut behind her, and crosses the room to the bright steel table where the syringes full of Cortexiphan Dr. Banner managed to synthesize are already laid out. Olivia picks one up, grimaces a little, and slides the needle into the big veins just below her wrist. Maybe this is what went wrong the last time. Maybe she needs a dose of the drug to get her to the right place. She's praying that's what it is, because otherwise, she's running out of ideas or other plans.

The empty syringe makes a soft ringing sound as she tosses it back into the tray. Olivia's already all but running up the stairs to access the tank. There's a breathing apparatus dangling over the top, just like in Walternate's lab. She grabs it, fits it into her mouth and takes a breath, and slides into the water with hardly a ripple.

For a minute, nothing happens. Olivia floats in the tank, eyes closed, just breathing and thinking of letting the universe pass through her, just like Walter told her the first time. Thinking of home.

Between one breath and the next, she vanishes, with only a swirling disturbance in the water of the tank to mark that she was there at all. The room stays silent, the tank empty, for another minute or two.

Then the tank explodes in a roar of heat and light, a ring of fire spreading outward and taking hold anywhere it can, blackening what it can't. Olivia tumbles out of the tank along with the water and lands with a crunch in the shattered glass from the tank, choking and gasping while the fire that wasn't put out by the flood dances up the walls.

night is the cathedral where we recognize the signs

we strangers know each other now as part of a whole design

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