p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"strongChapter 14: The Hospital/strong/p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"Moroto Regional Referral Hospital has not been updated since the sixties with its tiny black and white triangle mosaic floor tiles and lime green square tiles along the walls. Brown and orange mold fester in the caulked cracks. The rooms are separated by a thin plastic curtain that looks like it has been washed hundreds of times. One can easily imagine the various bodily fluids that they carried throughout the years. The doctor's office wood frame doors have fogged glass in the center. No names have been stenciled on them for a long time. /p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"Steve feels as if he is being watched. He is expecting someone to come out of the shadows to rescue him from his feelings, but no one ever does. /p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"Steve was with police investigators for three straight hours. They talked about a lot of things. He was honest - for the most part. Fifty thousand dollars was what he said the ransom was. He became a better liar at that moment, having a justifiable reason to lie to authorities./p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"Steve stands over Peggy's body lying on the coroner's small metal table thinking about how this story started and how this wasn't the plan. She was supposed to grow older for a few more years maybe not as long as she did in his timeline, but still. /p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"emI honestly don't know if I could have dealt with her dementia a second time. /em/p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"They were supposed to get the vibranium through Stark's son and not travel halfway around the world. He blames himself. His ego. He planned to wait until 2015 and not deviate from it, even though Peggy tried to raise an alternative. Time travel was his thing, not Peggy's. What did she know about the players involved? She knew Howard. She trusted Howard. /p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"emI put all my chips on Tony, I got Pepper instead. Now, look at us./em/p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"The nurse gives him the paperwork and instructions for loading "the body" for transport back to the States./p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"emThe 'body' use to be my wife./em/p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"He uses the restroom and grabs a Pop-Tart from the vending machine before heading to the parking lot./p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial; min-height: 14px;" /p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"strongChapter 15: Up On High: Entebbe Airport - July 14th - 4:32 pm /strong/p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"Inside Entebbe Airport, Steve looks out over the tarmac at the approaching 747 taxing down towards him./p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"Steve with his small carry-on and her purse, wonders why he checked her bag as well. /p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"emI want everything of her's to come back with me./em/p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"Steve has dark circles under his eyes, wearing the same clothes he had on when meeting Ms. Potts. Drinking coffee from the Voyager Bar, not because of the caffeine, but because it reminds him of the days when he did drink it and it was a comfort. My last friend./p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"Steve looks down and sees a couple of employees standing by her casket preparing to load her in. Removed from her, he looks down at her from up on high. Her body is in there, but that is not everything. /p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"Something else shares space inside Peggy's coffin./p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial; min-height: 14px;" /p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"strongChapter 16: Picking Up the Pieces: Flashback: Yesterday/strong/p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"Sheets of rain pour down./p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"Leaving Peggy's body in the trunk, Steve runs into traffic towards the smoke cloud. Beating police to the white Benz explosion./p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"On hands and knees, he scrounges for pieces of vibranium that remain from the explosion. He did not go to Sekovia, but someplace much closer. The vibranium laced with explosives was given to him not from a friend, but from someone who shares Eugene as an enemy. The enemy of my enemy gives me vibranium./p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"Feeling like a feral cat, he is disconnected from himself, watching this moment as a distant spectator. Sensing he is not alone, he quickly turns his head towards a bush fifty yards ahead. He sees two pairs of eyes watching him, a crouching Dori Milaje guard. Those eyes will forever be burned into his mind. Steve feels her judgment as if he were a vagrant jumping into a garbage bin. He is losing some aspect of his humanity at this moment. Her eyes disappear in the rain, this stops him for a second before he reclaims his purpose, shoveling the charred pieces of vibranium into his pockets. The evidence and his purpose a wrapped into one./p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"emJust like America, with a brutal past, this material will be repurposed for something good./em/p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"emI will make a shield from this and turn all this tragedy into something…/em/p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"em…something decent./em/p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"Moroto Regional Referral Hospital has not been updated since the sixties with its tiny black and white triangle mosaic floor tiles and lime green square tiles along the walls. Brown and orange mold fester in the caulked cracks. The rooms are separated by a thin plastic curtain that looks like it has been washed hundreds of times. One can easily imagine the various bodily fluids that they carried throughout the years. The doctor's office wood frame doors have fogged glass in the center. No names have been stenciled on them for a long time. /p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"Steve feels as if he is being watched. He is expecting someone to come out of the shadows to rescue him from his feelings, but no one ever does. /p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"Steve was with police investigators for three straight hours. They talked about a lot of things. He was honest - for the most part. Fifty thousand dollars was what he said the ransom was. He became a better liar at that moment, having a justifiable reason to lie to authorities./p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"Steve stands over Peggy's body lying on the coroner's small metal table thinking about how this story started and how this wasn't the plan. She was supposed to grow older for a few more years maybe not as long as she did in his timeline, but still. /p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"emI honestly don't know if I could have dealt with her dementia a second time. /em/p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"They were supposed to get the vibranium through Stark's son and not travel halfway around the world. He blames himself. His ego. He planned to wait until 2015 and not deviate from it, even though Peggy tried to raise an alternative. Time travel was his thing, not Peggy's. What did she know about the players involved? She knew Howard. She trusted Howard. /p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"emI put all my chips on Tony, I got Pepper instead. Now, look at us./em/p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"The nurse gives him the paperwork and instructions for loading "the body" for transport back to the States./p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"emThe 'body' use to be my wife./em/p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"He uses the restroom and grabs a Pop-Tart from the vending machine before heading to the parking lot./p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial; min-height: 14px;" /p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"strongChapter 15: Up On High: Entebbe Airport - July 14th - 4:32 pm /strong/p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"Inside Entebbe Airport, Steve looks out over the tarmac at the approaching 747 taxing down towards him./p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"Steve with his small carry-on and her purse, wonders why he checked her bag as well. /p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"emI want everything of her's to come back with me./em/p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"Steve has dark circles under his eyes, wearing the same clothes he had on when meeting Ms. Potts. Drinking coffee from the Voyager Bar, not because of the caffeine, but because it reminds him of the days when he did drink it and it was a comfort. My last friend./p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"Steve looks down and sees a couple of employees standing by her casket preparing to load her in. Removed from her, he looks down at her from up on high. Her body is in there, but that is not everything. /p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"Something else shares space inside Peggy's coffin./p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial; min-height: 14px;" /p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"strongChapter 16: Picking Up the Pieces: Flashback: Yesterday/strong/p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"Sheets of rain pour down./p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"Leaving Peggy's body in the trunk, Steve runs into traffic towards the smoke cloud. Beating police to the white Benz explosion./p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"On hands and knees, he scrounges for pieces of vibranium that remain from the explosion. He did not go to Sekovia, but someplace much closer. The vibranium laced with explosives was given to him not from a friend, but from someone who shares Eugene as an enemy. The enemy of my enemy gives me vibranium./p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"Feeling like a feral cat, he is disconnected from himself, watching this moment as a distant spectator. Sensing he is not alone, he quickly turns his head towards a bush fifty yards ahead. He sees two pairs of eyes watching him, a crouching Dori Milaje guard. Those eyes will forever be burned into his mind. Steve feels her judgment as if he were a vagrant jumping into a garbage bin. He is losing some aspect of his humanity at this moment. Her eyes disappear in the rain, this stops him for a second before he reclaims his purpose, shoveling the charred pieces of vibranium into his pockets. The evidence and his purpose a wrapped into one./p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"emJust like America, with a brutal past, this material will be repurposed for something good./em/p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"emI will make a shield from this and turn all this tragedy into something…/em/p
p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;"em…something decent./em/p
