Steve could guess what Nat was thinking – the obvious solution to their problem was to do exactly the opposite of whatever Loki had done to get them here. They had no idea how to do that, but Loki himself would. That left them right where they'd started this adventure, he thought – they had to find Loki.
"We'll need the rune stone and the tesseract," he observed. "The rune stone will probably still be in the museum, but if the Avengers are just a movie in this universe, then where's the tesseract?"
"In storage with SHIELD?" Nat suggested with a shrug. "Maybe on Asgard. Maybe at the bottom of the ocean. There's no way to tell from here."
None of those were comforting possibilities. "Then once we have them, we'll need to figure out how to program the rune stone," Steve said. Loki had inserted those gold pieces and manipulated them to get it working.
"Thor might know," Nat said, "but Loki probably knows better – I don't think even he is foolish enough to do something like enter another universe without a way to get back if things go wrong, and I'm sure Thor still wants to take him home. We'll have to find both of them first, anyway – then we can worry about the tesseract."
Steve nodded – although he knew it was going to prey on the back of his mind anyway. "We ended up here because this is where our actors were. Thor and Loki will have taken the places of theirs, too, but they're obviously not in the same movie we are."
"But we do have their names." Nat held up the notes she'd made. "That's a start."
"Then let's not waste any more time." Steve closed the laptop and stood up.
Just then, Dodger began to bark, and a moment later, somebody knocked on the trailer door. Steve and Nat exchanged a glance and then, because neither had a better idea, Steve went and answered it.
The caller was a tall, thin man with a mustache, who immediately leaned down to rub Dodger's ears. "Hey, Dodger," he said with a smile, then straightened up to talk to Steve. "Thought I'd let you know: it's almost two. Ridley needs you guys back in makeup."
"Oh. Yeah," said Steve. "Tell him we'll be right there."
He shut the door again and went to the closet to grab a few things – for all they knew, he and Nat might have a very long trip ahead of them. When he happened to look out the bedroom window, however, he saw that the stranger had not left. He was still standing just outside the door, waiting for them. The only other doors were in the cab of the RV, but that faced the studio building, and people would see. The windows didn't open far enough for Steve to climb out. For a moment he considered just knocking the guy out and fleeing, but as Natasha had said, these people had done nothing wrong. They were just trying to make a movie, and had no idea that their stars had been replaced…
… and, Steve realized, he still couldn't tell them. In their own universe, Steve and Natasha would have been arrested if they'd told anybody their real names. In this one, they would probably be considered insane.
"You got any ideas?" he asked Nat.
"Bide our time and wait for an opportunity," she replied. "When we get a chance to leave without having to make a big production out of it, we'll leave."
"So we just turn up? And do what?" asked Steve. "We don't even know what movie we're making!"
"It's called Breathless," Nat replied at once. "Ridley Scott is directing. It's loosely based on an incident on the Space Station Mir in 1997, when there was a fire and explosion."
"How did you know that?" asked Steve.
"I read the script pages they gave me," she said.
Of course she had. Nat never missed an opportunity to learn something. "You're taking this very well," Steve observed.
"Believe it or not, this isn't my first alternate universe," Nat told him. "Last time, though, we had an open portal home whenever we needed it."
"You'll have to tell me that story someday," Steve said.
"It's really not as cool as you're thinking."
The man with the mustache, who said his name was Henry, led them into another trailer parked just outside the studio building. This one was much more utilitarian, boxy and windowless with plain white siding, and inside was a row of mirrors and makeup tables separated by cubicle partitions. Henry got Steve and Natasha settled at two of these, and the woman named Maddy returned and passed out cups of coffee.
"Okay," she said, handing one to Steve, "since the Russian doesn't meet ScarJo's high standards, we're gonna grab some extra close-ups. Chris, we'll get you into a pre-fire EVA helmet on greenscreen two, for the first cargo bay sequence." She gave him a couple of pages, and then moved on. "Scarlett, you'll be in a post-fire B jumpsuit for Olga's call for help. Tabitha!" she called out.
"Already on it!" a voice replied from just outside.
Henry got to work, wiping old makeup off Steve's face and dabbing a new layer on. Meanwhile, a woman with dark hair in a pixie cut, who turned out to be the previously unseen Tabitha, brought in the costumes. Steve was a big cumbersome thing that he recognized as the upper half of a spacesuit. She left it sitting on top of a big Rubbermaid container and moved on to the rest of the cast.
Steve looked down at the pages he'd been given. These ones had bent corners and multiple corrections in blue pen, as if they'd been used before. His eye caught the highlighted words Rankin gazes in awe at the blue vista below, and he felt his stomach turn inside-out all over again.
This was no good. Steve could do a lot of things, but acting wasn't one of them. He couldn't even tell little white lies unless he rehearsed them in the mirror first, much less simulate gazing in awe at anything. If he couldn't make I don't know sound convincing, what the hell was he supposed to do with I can see everybody's house from up here?
Maddy came to look over Steve's shoulder while Henry worked on his face. "Any questions?" she asked.
The first one that sprang to mind was can I go home?, but Steve suspected he already knew what the answer would be. "Where's Dodger?" he asked. Who looked after the dog while the owner was filming?
"Relax," Henry assured him. "Paulette will take him for his walk, on schedule."
Through the partition, Steve could hear Natasha laughing at something. "Oh, that sounds exactly like Mark!" she said delightedly.
Steve wondered who Mark was. Then he wondered if Natasha knew.
The makeup took an awfully long time. Steve had seen both Natasha and Peggy do their faces up inside of ten minutes and come out looking fabulous, but this took nearly forty-five, and as far as Steve could tell from his reflection he looked no different at the end of it than he had at the beginning. That done, Tabitha and Henry helped Steve into his half-a-spacesuit, which weighed far more than it looked like, and led him back into the studio building.
At least the long process had given him time to look at the lines he was expected to see. It seemed all that was happening in the scene was Mission Specialist Matthew Rankin looking at the Earth and talking about how cool it was. Steve was starting to tell himself that he could do that. When he'd done the Captain America movies in the 1940's, he'd been playing himself – he hadn't been very good at it, but when filming a scene he'd been able to look back at real events that were similar, and try to imitate what he'd said or felt at the time. This couldn't be that much different. He'd never actually seen the Earth from space, of course, but he could remember the awe of watching the Chi'Tauri vessels come through the wormhole… if he could just get himself back into that headspace, it ought to work.
Henry and Tabitha showed him into a room where there was a green wall, and positioned him in front of it. A camera rig rolled right up to his face, making him lean away involuntarily.
"Okay," said a woman standing next to the camera. "Let's start with the wordless ones. Awe at the blue vista, please."
Steve's fragile confidence collapsed like a house of cards as he looked around the mostly empty soundstage. "Where is it?" he asked.
"Where's what?"
"The blue vista," he clarified. "What am I supposed to look at?"
"Same as last time," she said, as if this were supposed to be reassuring. "Right there."
She pointed at the ceiling. There was another green panel up there.
Steve was starting to panic again. How was he supposed to express awe at the blue vista when all he could see was a green panel? "It's not even blue!" he protested.
"You're an actor," the woman replied. "Use your imagination. Lights!"
The ambient lighting in the room went out, and a big cluster of blue-white bulbs came on overhead. In the heavy spacesuit costume, Steve immediately felt like he was overheating.
He tried, though. He shut his eyes and did his best to remember the wormhole and the leviathans and the fear and astonishment that had gone with that. He thought about the opening sequence from the Planet Earth documentary series, which he'd binged on Netflix one night when he couldn't sleep, and definitely featured an awe-inspiring blue vista rolling by. He could sort of see himself as an astronaut. Before he could really get into it, though, the camera moved even closer, and he couldn't stop himself from looking directly into the lens.
"Cut!" the woman said. "Try it again."
It was no good, though. The camera was right there. He couldn't not look at it – if he tried, he became paranoid that it would run right over him. If he shut his eyes, the second-unit director ordered him to open them. And hanging over all of it was the inescapable knowledge that he was being watched. That was what Steve had always hated most about the War Bonds ads, or any television appearance, the constant presence of that staring audience. He'd had to take Peggy's advice and pretend there was a one-way mirror in between them. The whole thing just made him feel so silly, especially when he didn't even have any lines to say. He was just supposed to stand there and gape like an idiot, while being filmed.
Eventually the second-unit director – her name was Brenda – got fed up and decided to try something else. One of the grips read out what was supposed to be dialogue from mission control, while Steve replied.
"How's the view Rankin?" the scrip-reader asked.
Steve took a deep breath. "Spectacular. I can see my house from up here."
"Can you really?"
"I can see everybody's house from up here."
"Cut," sighed Brenda. "Try it again. A little passion, Chris? This isn't Captain America's Fitness Challenge."
Steve wanted to retract his head into the spacesuit costume like a turtle into its shell. Why couldn't he have landed in an alternate universe where people didn't remember Captain America's Fitness Challenge?
At last the second-unit director gave up in disgust and told everybody to take a break. Henry and Tabitha helped Steve out of the heavy spacesuit costume and gave him a bottle of water to re-hydrate after standing under the hot studio lights. As he stood there chugging it twitching uncomfortably in a shirt practically pasted to him by sweat, Ridley Scott entered the room.
"How's it going?" the director asked.
"We're having an Off Day," Brenda replied, looking at Steve out of the sides of her eyes.
Steve swallowed his water and tried desperately to think of something to say. "I'm… just not feeling it," he tried. "I need to go look at some space pictures or something." Evans had those in his trailer. Was that what he used them for? Inspiration?
"Apparently we used up all our good work in that stunt this morning," Scott grumbled. "Scarlett's suddenly having trouble deciding what a Russian accent sounds like."
From out in the hall came Natasha's voice. "Russia has the surface area of the moon," she said. "If you want a 'Russian Accent' you need to be more specific!"
Steve held out the empty water bottle. "Can I get another one of these?" he asked hopefully.
There was a cooler in the makeup trailer with water and sodas in it. Steve dug a second bottle out of the ice and downed it, while Nat lounged in one of the chairs examining her fingernails. She seemed to be having a great time playing the spoiled starlet.
"How'd you do?" she asked with a smirk.
"I don't think I'm speaking to you," said Steve. He mopped his forehead with the edge of his t-shirt, trying to find a place that wasn't already damp. "I don't think I need to, anyway, you were probably watching the whole thing."
"Actually, no," said Nat, "but I'm hoping they'll let us watch the dailies! Anyway." She sat up and held out her phone. "I didn't learn anything about the tesseract, but that's not surprising. I did manage to learn, however, that Chris Hemsworth, who plays Thor, is currently on sabbatical with his family in Australia." The picture she'd found was of a smiling man in a jacket and tie, with short blond hair and beard stubble. He did kind of look like Thor, although it was strange to see him with his hair cut.
"I thought I was Chris," said Steve.
"Apparently there's a lot of Chris around here," Nat replied.
"Any sign of a chance to escape yet?" Steve asked. It couldn't come fast enough.
"A little more 'acting' from you ought to do the trick. Sooner or later they'll just give up."
"I'm glad I'm good for something."
There was a knock on the door, and without waiting for an answer, another studio employee entered the makeup trailer. This was a thin young woman with long, limp blonde hair under a pink knitted hat. "Excuse me, Scarlett?" she said to Nat. "Your husband's here."
Steve looked at Natasha, wondering how she would react. She'd always avoided getting into long-term relationships, partly because of her work and partly because she couldn't have children – the reason she'd thought things might work with Banner was because neither factor would be an issue. Would she, too, be shocked to learn she had a husband in this universe?
Of course she wasn't. Natasha didn't do shock. She just sat up and stretched. "Be right there," she promised, as she got to her feet.
Steve followed her to the door so he could watch. He had to see this.
The man waiting outside was in his late thirties, with short dark hair and brown eyes in a rugged, if not exactly handsome, face. He was wearing a collarless white shirt and had a black blazer draped over his arm. Nat hurried up to greet him, and he smiled at her.
"Hi, honey," she said.
"Hello, Scar," the man replied. He put out his free arm, and Nat stood on her toes to give him a quick kiss. Other people turned their heads to give the couple some privacy – public displays of affection did make people uncomfortable, after all – but Steve couldn't look away even though he knew it was rude. Surely, this woman's only husband would be able to tell something was wrong.
"How's filming?" the man asked.
"Chris is having an off day," Nat told him, shaking her head as if fondly exasperated with a long-running problem. The man looked up sharply, and his eyes narrowed when he saw Steve. Steve offered a raised hand and what he hoped was a friendly smile, but the man looked away again immediately.
"Bad news," he said to Natasha. "It looks like I have to leave for Philadelphia tonight instead of tomorrow. Don't worry, I found somebody to watch Mari. I didn't want you to come home for the evening and find her with a stranger."
A lot of people wouldn't have noticed the beat Natasha missed, but Steve did. There was a tiny pause, and then she nodded. "Thanks for letting me know. Who'd you get?"
"The laundry lady's daughter, Danielle," he replied. "She's sixteen, and Alice promised me she's very responsible looking after her own siblings."
"All right. Have a good trip." Nat kissed the man on the cheek again.
"I'll call you when my flight gets in," he replied. "Love you." The man straightened up and fixed Steve with a glare that seemed to say I'm watching you, then turned to go back to his car as if nothing had happened.
"Love you, too!" Nat called after him.
Steve moved out of the way to let her climb the stairs to the makeup trailer again. She fished one of the water bottles out of the cooler and sat back down in her chair. Her hands were shaking, ever so slightly, as she unscrewed the cap. The performance must've been stressful for her.
There were several things Steve could have said at that moment. The most obvious would be to make some kind of comment on the fact that the husband seemed jealous of, or at the very least concerned about, Steve. If he brought that up, however, Nat would probably mention that apparently half the people in their own universe thought the two of them were sleeping together. Dr. Foster's friend Darcy had told them all about it, with an enthusiasm that had been slightly terrifying.
So instead, he said the second thing that came to mind, which was to ask, "who's Mari?"
"I don't know." Nat shrugged. "Maybe the kid. Maybe the dog."
"I thought you'd met Mari, Chris," said Tabitha, passing them on her way to the door.
"Oh, I probably have," Steve said, then repeated the words to himself and wondered if he were a worse actor with a script or when he was extemporizing.
"I told you he was having an off day," said Nat.
A few minutes later, as Henry worked on getting the makeup off Steve's face again, Ridley Scott himself entered the trailer with a resigned expression on his face.
"All right, Scarlett," he said. "I found a professor of Balto-Slavic languages at UCLA who went through the script for me, and he says we have to re-write all the Russian and has volunteered to do so on his own time to reflect the various characters' regional origins as suggested by their names. It seems to be something he's passionate about."
"I'll have to send him a gift basket," said Nat.
"Also," Scott went on, "we're now having electrical problems on soundstages two and four, and nobody can figure out where the wiring actually connects." He held up his hands. "I know when I'm beaten, so let's all just get a good night's sleep and we'll start again tomorrow morning, when hopefully we've all worked some things out of our systems."
"You're giving us the evening off?" asked Henry eagerly.
"Yes," said Scott. "All of you, get out of here." He turned to leave again. "Maddy! Where are you?"
"Right here, Mr. Scott!" her voice replied from somewhere outside.
"Good. I need a massage and a Kahlua."
Henry resumed scrubbing at Steve's face, with extra vigor now. "If I'm fast, I'll have time to pick my boyfriend up from work!" he explained. "I can surprise him!"
"Really?" Steve saw an opportunity. "In that case, just go – I want a shower anyway."
Henry was delighted. "Thanks, Chris! I really appreciate it!" He put down the cloth he'd been using and started collecting his things. "You're an amazing guy. Don't let today get to you, none of us can give a hundred percent all the time. See you tomorrow! See you, Scarlett!"
"Bye, Henry," said Nat, and smiled as the makeup artist ran for his car. "How can you be that much of a sucker for romance and still not catch any of the women I throw at you?"
"Excuse me, I did that so I won't find him standing outside my door again tonight." Steve pulled off the towel Henry had wound around his neck and got up.
"Keep telling yourself that," said Nat. "I want a shower, too. Meet you in twenty?"
"Twenty," Steve agreed.
After standing under the blazing studio lights all afternoon, a cold shower was exactly what Steve needed. As before, Dodger greeted him at the trailer door, and Steve gave the dog a moment of affection before stepping inside and almost literally peeling his t-shirt off. He walked into the bathroom with it still in his hand, and then stopped short when he saw his reflection. Steve had changed his shirt once before that day, or at least had it changed for him by Tabitha the costume mistress – and he must have been too distracted and nervous to notice that he had tattoos.
There were three lines of text on the upper left of his chest, and on the right side of his abdomen the words in loving memory of Bardsley with me always. On his right shoulder was the word loyalty above a Chinese pictogram, and on the left a bull's head. Steve grabbed the shaving mirror and turned his back to the sink so he could check if there were any more on his back. There didn't appear to be. When he got dressed again he would have to make sure he kept those covered, or Natasha would never stop teasing him about it.
No wonder he felt so oddly dull. This wasn't even his body. Chris Evans was a great big physically fit man, but he'd never had any super-serum. When Steve felt weak and trembly, or like he couldn't quite breathe or hear as well as he ought to, that was the lack of it.
That was also why the shower, while it felt good, was still not quite as good as Steve had hoped. The serum had overclocked all his senses, including touch – he remembered coming out of the chamber and flinching when Erskine and Howard touched him, their fingers almost painful on his bare skin. He'd gotten used to it, but returning to what he supposed must be normal felt like he was wearing an extra layer he could not shed.
After his shower, he made sure the sleeves on his shirt were long enough to cover all the body art, and headed outside. Dodger trotted behind him, hoping for some playtime. Steve was on his way back to the makeup trailer to meet up with Nat when he encountered the other man who'd done the stunt with them that morning – the one named Glover.
"Hey, Chris," said Glover. He was now dressed in a white polo shirt and a beige jacket, eager to take advantage of their night off. "You headed into town?"
Steve looked down at the dog following him. "Just taking Dodger for some fresh air."
"Me and some of the crew were going to the Spare Room," Glover said. "You want to come?"
Steve was trying to think of an excuse to refuse when a bright pink convertible rolled up behind him. Natasha was in the driver's seat.
"Get in, loser," she ordered. "We're going to Malibu."
Steve looked back at Glover. "Apparently I have other plans," he said.
Glover grinned. "See you later, Chris."
"See you later, uh…" Steve swallowed. He had no idea what this man's first name was. "Mr. Glover?"
"Donny," said the other, his smile turning into a concerned frown.
"See you later, Donny," said Steve.
Nat reached over to open the passenger-side door for Steve. Dodger bounced in ahead of him, tail wagging in excitement at the prospect of a car ride. Steve climbed in.
"Why are we going to Malibu?" he asked, as Nat pulled away.
"Because according to her driver's license, Scarlett Johansson lives there," said Nat. "We need to get in touch with Thor, and if we do it in your trailer we're more likely to be interrupted and might be questioned when we try to leave. At Johansson's place, the only person we need to worry about is Danielle the babysitter, since her husband told us himself that he's going to Philadelphia. As an added bonus," she went on, "we won't have to awkwardly lie to any Apple Store employees."
"Let it go," said Steve.
"No." She handed him a pair of sunglasses. "These are yours. I got them from your makeup table."
Steve put them on. "You know," he observed, "us going back to your place together isn't going to help your husband's opinion of me."
"What he thinks of you, or of his wife, is not our problem," said Nat. "Our problem is finding Loki and Thor and getting back to our own universe."
That was true, but Steve didn't like being glared at by jealous husbands. It had happened before, and it was always a little insulting – Steve wasn't the type who messed around with married women. He'd once asked Howard why everybody assumed he did, and the only reply he'd gotten was "have you seen yourself?", as if being tall and muscular automatically stripped him of any principles.
Of course, the person Johansson's husband – Steve hadn't caught his name – was suspicious of was not actually Steve. It was this actor, Chris Evans. Steve wondered if he were that type. He hoped not. An actor who played Captain America ought to have a little more integrity. The role wasn't just a character, it represented a certain set of ideals… or did it? Maybe that was just how Steve saw it.
It was a troubling thought in another way, too – as he'd realized when he'd seen the tattoos, Steve hadn't switched places with this actor in body, only in mind. The idea that he might be occupying a body that had slept with Natasha was weird, to say the least.
That train of thought also reminded him of something. "I'm just curious," he said to Nat. "Did you look for your scar?"
"Yes, I did," she replied. "I also googled Chris Evans, so I know what he looks like with no shirt on. The loyalty one is my favourite."
Steve groaned.
They left the city and headed west on the Pacific Coast Highway, into the setting sun. Under more normal circumstances, Steve could have enjoyed the drive – it was a nice evening, with the sunset glittering on the water and a refreshing sea breeze in their faces. Dodger leaned out the back passenger side with his tongue lolling out, and Steve would have sworn the dog had a smile on his face.
Steve's brain, however, just wouldn't stop churning out awful possibilities. What if the tesseract in this universe was locked up on Asgard, where they couldn't get at it? What if the rune stone was still lying buried somewhere instead of in the museum, maybe under a building or at the bottom of the ocean? What if something happened to Loki or Thor before they could all find each other? If they, too, had switched bodies with their actors, they would no longer have their Asgardian invulnerability. They could get hurt or killed as easily as any human.
Then there was the question of what was going on back in the universe they'd left. What if something happened there? Stark was obsessed with the idea that the Chi'Tauri would come back for the Infinity Stones, and Thor had seemed to agree with him. What if that came true while three Avengers were in no position to deal with it? What if some other disaster or supervillain or conspiracy popped up, and people expected Captain America to be there? What if the Wakandan scientists managed to cure Bucky, and Steve was not there?
Nat might not know what Steve was thinking about, but she could read his face like a book, and she reached over to squeeze his arm. "Don't worry, Rogers. We're good at getting ourselves out of messes."
"We're also good at getting deeper into them," said Steve.
"Well, nobody wants to kill us here, at least," said Nat. "As long as we don't give them a reason to, we ought to be fine."
"Given our record, is that really supposed to reassure me?"
She just laughed.