ArchivedLogs:Vignette - Howl

Vignette - Howl
Dramatis Personae Steve
In Absentia	2016-01-09 "{But we sure kicked ass.}" (Warning: brief mention of atomic bombing at the end.)'
Location <NYC> Harbor Commons - Commonhaus - Lower East Side
Accessible to all residents of the Commons via electronic keycard, this three-story building holds a number of facilities freely available for the shared use of all Commons residents. The stone-floored foyer is high ceilinged -- balconies on the two upper floors look down into this entrance, leaving just the wide skylit ceiling three stories up to trickle light down through the whole of the house. Through wide wood-and-glass doors the spacious dining area is visible on the left; on the right, heavier doors beside the elevator lead to the similarly large kitchens. There are four single-user toilets on this floor, two apiece by the foyer and the dining room. Though a wide staircase runs all the way up, there is also an elevator tucked to one side. For the adventurous, though, there's another way up through the house -- through the center of the house where the balconies look down, an enormous climbing structure has been erected, solid wood platforms softened with carpeting, held together with strong spiderwebbed steel cables. Interlaced in an intricate maze that spirals up through the whole of the house and down to the basement, it provides a crazily winding path to duck and wriggle and worm through, with exits -- if you can /find/ them -- dispensed out onto each upper balcony and into the basement below. It's a chilly, drizzly Saturday afternoon, exactly between lunch and dinnertime. The Commonhaus is quiet and still save for Steve's cleaning. Dressed in a red and black flannel and dark blue jeans -- both well-chewed and somewhat less skillfully mended -- with his shield slung across his back, he has just emerged from the kitchen with a bucket and rags in hand when the knock comes. He sets down his cleaning implements and opens the front door. Outside on the front steps, two visitors share the large black dome of a sturdy umbrella. The taller of the two, holding the umbrella, is a young woman of mixed ethnicity -- indeterminately East Asian and white -- her straight black hair cropped shorter in back than on the sides, slanting down in a sharp line toward the bangs parted precisely at the center of her forehead. She wears a long red coat, a soft black chenille sweater and a dusty rose linen skirt over tall black boots. The man beside her is much, much older, shorter, his features distinctly Japanese. His full head of snow white hair is cropped smartly, and he wears a black greatcoat on top of a charcoal gray suit, white dress shirt with a red tie. His eyes were certainly dark brown once, but have faded almost to gray, and right now they're locked on Steve with a wondering intensity. "{Captain. It's really you.}" His words come out in gruff continental French with a heavy Provence accent. "{Peggy wrote to all of us, and I saw you on the news but...}" His eyes brim with tears. "{I had to see you for myself.}" Steve had started to wave the visitors in, but comes up short when the man speaks. "{My God,}" he blurts, in similarly accented French. "Jimmy! {Come in, please come in, it's /cold/ out there...}" He takes half a step back and sweeps his arm wide and urgent. Jim Morita huffs, indignant. "{I may be /old/, but I can handle forty degrees.}" Even so, he steps inside and into Steve's (careful) embrace. "{Seventy years, Captain.}" He glances back at the the young woman as she folds up the umbrella and follows him inside. "{This is my granddaughter, Naomi.}" "Naomi Dugan," she adds, extending her hand with a dazzling smile. "{It's an honor to finally meet you, Captain.}" Her French is more stilted and formal than either man's. Steve releases his old teammate and shakes Naomi's hand, wide-eyed. "Dugan?" he echoes, taking his guests' coats and leading them toward the sunroom. Naomi offers her arm to Jim, steadying him as they walk. "{I heard a lot about you from /both/ of my grandfathers.}" "{Dugan named her father after you,}" Jim adds, grinning. "{I'm honestly shocked there weren't more /Steves/ in that generation of Howling Commando brats.}" Steve blushes fiercely, red from ear to ear. "{Please, sit. I'll go get some coffee -- the coffee here is /spectacular/...}" "{Please, no. Stay, at least or a while,}" Jim pleads as his granddaughter helps him down onto one of the wicker couches. "{I know I'm making you feel mortally rude, but coffee can wait.}" "{I can go get it,}" Naomi suggests, "{if your coffee isn't too hidden and your machine fairly straightforward.}" "{I...}" Steve blinks. Then, kind of uncertainly, "{Thank you. The coffee...is in the cupboard. There are many kinds, all labeled.}" He points her in the direction of the kitchen. "{The coffee machine is a computer, but it still has a normal coffee function.}" He gives a helpless shrug. "{She programs spaceships,}" Jim offers, leaning back contently, "{she can probably figure out a coffee machine.}" "{Thank you.}" Naomi starts to leave, then pauses, looks back at Steve. "{You take your coffee black, right?}" Steve nods mutely, eyes wide as he watches her leave. "{She's something else.}" Jim is studying Steve now. "{Captain...I'm sorry. I should have sent word before coming here in person.}" "{No, no, no.}" Steve sits down catty-corner from him, shaking his head vehemently. "{I'm just...it's a lot to take in. /Dugan's/ granddaughter? And yours!}" "{What, and Peggy hasn't paraded her grandchildren and great-nieces and nephews in front of you?}" Steve studies the table in front of him intently. "{Showed me pictures, but this is something else completely. Last I saw you, you were a /kid/. Now /she's/...}" "{Older than I was, in 1945,}" Jim says, his smile gentle and haunted. "{God, we were all so young. Thought we were invincible, didn't we?}" The nod of Steve's head is barely visible. "{Boy, were we wrong.}" "{But we sure kicked ass,}" Jim says, with more fondness than bravado. "{You broke a lot of hearts when you went down with that plane. Left some shoes no one could really fill.}" Steve's broad shoulders slump. "{There was no other way. Not enough time.}" He closes his eyes and presses the heels of his hands against them. "{We knew that, but it was hard to let go. We'd seen you survive so much that would kill other men...}" Jim sighs, leaning forward to rest a hand on Steve's shoulder. "{Howard just kept looking for you. Wouldn't sleep. Hardly ate. When SSR tried called him off he -- well, you can probably imagine.}" "{Yes, I can.}" Steve laughs, a short huff of breath. He pats the hand on his shoulder gently. "{They told me the /Valkyrie/ came apart on impact, spread out over dozens of miles of ocean. It's unlikely you could have found...}" He trails off, his pupils dilating and his breath coming more rapidly. But then he blinks it away, pulls himself back. "{Look...I'm not sorry I did it, but I /am/ sorry I wasn't there with you to finish the fight.}" Jim gives a slow shake of his head. "{We managed. Dugan and James led us together. Dugan was about as /crazy/ as you, but couldn't take out two guys at once while doing a backflip. And James probably /could/ take out two guys while doing a backflip, but was much too sensible.}" This with a smile, though it fades quickly. "{We only had one more mission before the Battle of Berlin. I'd rather not talk about that just now, if it's all the same to you...}" Steve leans toward Jim and clasps his hand. The scent of fresh coffee has reached them from the kitchen now. "{It is /not/ all the same to me. I only want to talk about what you are comfortable with. No more, no less.}" Jim squeezes Steve's hand, then offers a crooked grin as he pulls his hand free. "{After V-E Day, we went out and got roaring drunk.}" He's shrugging out of his suit jacket and unbuttoning the right cuff of his shirt. "{And we also got these.}" He jerks back the fabric to reveal a much-faded tattoo on the inside of his forearm: a wolf with feathered wings, crushing a thick chain in its teeth. Steve leans in and stares at the tattoo, his eyebrows raise up. "{/Everyone?/}" "{Everyone.}" Jim is just grinning now, as Naomi returns with three mugs of black coffee on a serving tray that she found somewhere. "{Thank you, my dear.}" "{Thank you.}" Steve takes a cup and wraps his hands around it, glancing back at Jim's arm. "{I want to get one, too. Even if it's 70 years late.}" "{If you don't, you'll never hear the end of it from Gabe.}" Jim waves for Naomi to sit down beside him, which she does, setting one cup in front of him and taking the last one for herself. "{Did you go on to fight in the Pacific?}" Steve asks, hesitant, glancing at Naomi. "{Almost didn't.}" Jim pauses in lifting his coffee for a drink, blowing across its surface. "{The brass assigned the team to China, but wanted to send /me/ home. Well, not /home/, but back to the camp. Dugan told them to go fuck themselves. Phillips was /slightly/ more diplomatic, but in the end I did go with them. Didn't have a whole lot to do, honestly; Japan was already beat, and then August rolled around and...}" He looks down into his cup. Trails off into a silence that no one fills for a long, long while.