worthallthis | The Last Voyages: IC Inbox

[Sorry, B; she happily eats steak off of probably-recently-used combat knives. This is the bullshit you get to deal with now. She does accept the spoon, though.]

How long have you been off it?

Oh, just this flood. Once I'm back to being a warden again, it'll come back. Hopefully, anyway. This--

[He taps his metal shoulder lightly.]

--aches like hell without it. It's a lot better than it was with my first arm, this is an upgrade from what HYDRA gave me, but it's still not great. It's bearable, but I've gotten so use to living without constant pain that it's annoying now.

Does it bother you, keeping the stuff that they gave you?

A little. I resisted getting it back for a long time, as an inmate. I suppose I could ask the Admiral to take it away again, now, but then I get the chronic pain back, so.

[He see-saws his hand back and forth, then leans over to dip his spoon into the peanut butter, too.]

I might as well use it for good now, anyway. Protect people and shit.

I get that.

[She thinks that if Decima had given her any hardware advantages, she'd have ripped herself limb from limb to get rid of them, but everybody is different.]

A friend of mine, she, uh-- someone tortured her by giving her a stapedectomy once, which means they cut a little bone out of her and made her deaf in one ear. She works with an earpiece; she needs her hearing, and they knew that. So later, she got a cochlear implant that embedded that earpiece inside her. It worked even better for her than the regular earpiece had before the stapedectomy.

[Giving a big old "fuck you" to your torturers by taking advantage of the things they torture you with can actually be pretty great, if you're into that sort of thing.]

[The old HYDRA arm is gone, though he has to admit he never actually hated it. He's paradoxically more fond of that old terrible thing than he is of the vibranium one that came with its secret conditions. At least HYDRA was honest about what it was doing.

He does still kind of hate the serum, but again, chronic pain without it. So he makes due.]

Good for her.

[He pauses for another bite of peanut butter, sucking on the spoon a second before offering,]

They, uh, did a lot of torturing where you come from, sounds like. Really sophisticated stuff.

[Taking out an ear bone? Seriously? Plus what she went through. He knows he personally was subjected to a lot of weird shit, but he also knows he personally is something of an outlier due to his serum.]

[She shrugs, seemingly apathetic, and takes another scoop of peanut butter.]

Comes with the territory in our line of work.

It's ineffective and stupid, really. Unless the goal is just to cause pain and mess up your sense of self, not to get information. Once the pain gets bad enough, people'll say anything, whatever they think you want to hear.

[He sounds a mix of annoyed and sad, saying that. He's been used for torture before, as well as being tortured himself. They hadn't wanted information out of him, though, usually, at least.]

The threat of torture works better than torture itself.

[Shaw murmurs - her tone not sad, and perhaps just a little bit too casual. Even in her ISA days, torture had never been her MO, but she'd still been far more comfortable with it as a concept than most.]

But yeah. Destroying my sense of self was the goal.

[Can't argue with that, he supposes.]

Sure did keep me in line for a long time. But I liked to think I was a different case than most people.

Yeah?

[She glances over at him, silently inviting him to elaborate.]

Because of the serum. I was a more valuable asset than most. They couldn't get it to take in anyone else for a long time, and everyone thought Steve was dead, so they had to hold onto me. I know nobody else was subjected to the chair they used on me, at least, or the trigger words.

Lucky you.

[She deadpans, picking up her mug of cocoa and holding it in both hands. Belatedly, she adds:]

Glad you got out. How'd it happen? Rescue, or escape?

Little bit of both.

[B rolls his mug of cocoa between his hands a moment before explaining.]

They made a big play, and it failed. Steve was there and he stopped it. Stopped me. And then when it was over and the helicarriers were falling out of the sky, he let me hit him until I remembered a little bit of who he was.

Then I died as the thing fell apart around us, and wound up here. With another Steve.

[Shaw is quiet for a moment or two, considering the story. Finally, she says:]

That sucks.

[Truly she is a wordsmith.]

Another Steve?

[It's okay, he's not expecting a lot there. And he's been through the story enough times that it's not too hard to talk about.]

It's complicated. The Steve here ain't from the exact same version of the universe I'm from. Us both coming here from different points in time spun them off onto different timelines. Or maybe somethin' else did, I'm not really sure.

[He shrugs.]

I've been to his. Seen his version of me, in his universe.

And that didn't cause some kind of, I don't know, time paradox?

Well, his version of me didn't see me, that would have seriously fucked up our plans. I don't think it would've, though. Time doesn't really work like that in our set of universes. It just spins off new branches, so there's not really any chance of a paradox.

[He pulls one hand from his mug to illustrate, veering it off in another direction.]

Just whatever you change starts a new branch, or changes the course of the one you're on. The one you came from stays pretty much the same.

Huh.

[Pause.]

Is that how deals work? I won't actually change my world, I'll just start a new one?

I don't think so. I think you'll be changing your actual world, the one you'll go back to when you're finished here.

But if one of your team-mates shows up, if they're from a different point in time from you, your deal might not affect their version of the world.

[He shrugs helplessly.]

Or it might. Maybe the universe bunch me and Steve come from is unique in how timelines work, or maybe yours is. You'd have to ask the Admiral to be sure, but I know that most people go back to their own world and their deal works just fine.

[Okay.

Okay, good.]

I didn't think about the timepoint thing. Guess I just assumed we'd all come from the same spot, if it happened.

There's people from all over timelines, here, when they come from the same or similar universes. So you never know.

I know Steve came from further on than I did. And he's had, uh. He's had several other version of me here before me.

That's gotta be weird for both of you, right?

Weird as hell.

[B looks rueful.]

He married the one right before me, actually. I, uh. Spent a long time afraid I wasn't measuring up.

[He still kind of is, sometimes. He knows Steve loves him, for him, not because he's got the face and prior history as his husband. But that doesn't mean he doesn't have some imposter syndrome going on. (While occasionally he also thinks his other self was a moron, too. It's complicated.)]

[Her eyebrow arches, and she takes a long sip of her cocoa before answering, really taking in how complicated and confusing and, honestly, kind of messed up that sounds to her.]

You guys got your own little soap opera going on, huh.

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