A / N Ok wow so I get an award for least consistency , sorry it 's been five thousand years , dears . Life got all over the place . Sorry this chapter isn 't too thrilling ~ ! Plot advancement ;C . Next up is a lot more action and feels ~
We ended up going to a park. We could have gone anywhere, really, and it was hardly the most thrilling place we could have been on our last night of freedom. But it was neutral and natural and literally No Man's Land and maybe that's what we needed to figure ourselves out.
"So are we going to play twenty questions or what?" I asked, leaning against the bench laxly and breathing in sharp night air.
"Twenty questions?" Steve asked. He was sitting almost at the far end of the bench, not looking rigid, but a little starched.
"It's a guessing game."
"Oh." Steve was silent for a few moments. "You think shooting questions around in the dark will help?"
"Well, better than bullets, anyways. What do you think, Comrade?"
"Why do you keep calling me that? You're not historically ignorant." He didn't sound bothered.
"Because it's irksome and ironic and those are things I'm into." I slid a glance at him, watched his mouth compress into a thin line. "And it's verbal leverage."
"For what?"
"I don't know. I'm not a psychologist." I looked up at the tree branches bending towards us, never going to reach. "It's affectionate too, I guess." I didn't like spelling out what I was thinking, what I meant. But I figured a few hours of honesty—carefully selected honesty—and a bit of an ego sacrifice would resolve enough of the tension between us that I wouldn't feel the need to tiptoe around Steve every time we went to work on the battlefield. I didn't have the energy or temperament for that to last very long before I pirouetted off the deep end into a graceless ballet.
"How long am I going to feel the need to make sure you don't do something drastic that'll leave the team scrambling to keep up with you? Or save you." Steve sighed, still looking poised.
"That's up to you. I'm not a hero that needs saving, Steve. I'm not even a hero. If I die, I die. Sorry to break it to you, man, but you're not my blonde –haired, blue-eyed guardian angel. You're not meant to be." It's not that I didn't value my life.
Sure, it was battered and twisted and converted near beyond recognition. But it was mine. No, I just realized we weren't in a business that had potential drawbacks like a bad dental plan. Our drawbacks were the loss of loved ones. Death. And I had made peace with that. I couldn't function otherwise.
He made an angry sound in the back of his throat. "I don't have a savior complex. This isn't all about you. You're a handicap, Lane."
"Well, don't feel the need to candycoat on my behalf." I shook my head. "I'm not a novice, Steve. I'm not an art student trying her hand in combat. I've got my doctorate in bloodshed ten times over." I took a breath. "And you're your own handicap. Don't be so hung up on things I haven't even done yet. I took a hit for you once. I hardly commandeered the mission."
Steve sighed again, this time in resignation. "Maybe I jumped the gun a little bit. But I don't like your reckless streak."
"It doesn't like you." I surprised him into looking at me. I smirked. "Look, I didn't join this initiative aiming to make flower crowns and hold hands with everybody. I came here because…well, because this is my only option outside of starting my life over, living in some flat in a neighborhood nowhere close to home and trying to make a living off of art that doesn't even have half of me in it any more. What would you have chosen?"
"I would have chosen exactly the same as you. I did choose exactly the same as you." He looked at me somberly for a moment, jaw tight against some emotion, and it hit me how true that was. He'd been some kid coming into his own, amped up with Uncle Sam, torn between art and war, and then he was lost. And then he was found, and he had nothing but a new beginning with the Avengers or a new beginning without them.
He had been in the same unfortunate sailboat as me, not too long ago.
"Yeah. Yeah, you did." I sighed myself. "Okay, this is getting too heavy. Tell me something that means something to you that has nothing to do with war or battle or heroes or secret agencies."
He thought for awhile, and I appreciated that it looked like he was seriously considering his answer.
"Films."
"Films?" I raised my eyebrows. It seemed so…unlikely. Trivial. "You're living special effects."
"Movies are progressive, yes. But they're conservative, too. They come in all kinds of genres and styles. They keep the past. They reflect what this generation is thinking, striving for. A lot of them are idealistic or unrealistic or downright immoral, but so are people, and in that way, they're honest." He shook his head. "They pretend to be everything they're not but they can't help being what they are."
"Films."
"Films."
I pondered that for a bit, then came back to when Steve spoke.
"What about you?" He leaned forward, the tension finally away from his frame, ebbing away from us. "What's important to you, something that has nothing to do with metal or conversions or Engineers or secret agencies?" A very small, almost sweet smile began at the corner of his lips.
"I don't know." I pressed my lips together. That wasn't right. "Fixing things. Like cars and people and broken tvs."
"You know how to do all that?" He asked, mildly impressed.
"No, but that's the point. The point is that you don't know how but you try anyways and you find someone who does and you build things but you build each other, too." The memories came back to me slowly, braving the cold city air and the water damage left by the Project. "I'd look through newspapers, when I was trying to keep myself in school. I'd find odd jobs. I miss that I can't do that anymore."
We talked like that, for an hour more. About favourite colours and memories and things we wanted to happen and things we couldn't have.
By the time we arrived back to the tower and went to our rooms, I was sure he disliked me a lot less.
Or at least we wouldn't end up killing each other during the lock – down.
Probably.
