stuff and fic
Two items, perhaps not as unrelated as they first appear:
* I have a tumblr, which I have used exclusively as a fic announcement page until I posted this, entirely to see how it worked. As usual with social media, I seem to be missing the point because apparently one is not supposed to create original content for tumblr, instead repost someone else's. ;) But here I scanned in the image myself because I found it amusing.
* Ficlet! Which is actually not getting posted to the tumblr announcement page because it's not going up on AO3, I don't think, until -- or if -- there is more. It's 1800 words, which is a short drabble by my standards and it follows directly from this, which of course follows directly from this.
Freezer Burn deleted scene, extended edition (sorta)
1800 words; genfic/PG
Steve was somewhere between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh when the phone rang in his helmet. The tiny little illuminated screen on his windshield told him that it was Peggy, which was the only reason he answered.
"I got a phone call oh, about six hours ago, warning me that you might be en route and arriving in ill humor," Peggy began as soon as he said hello. "I asked why and was given a regretful sigh and the assurance that it would be better if I heard it from you first. I know the traffic on the Jersey Turnpike can be ugly, but I also know you."
Steve confessed that he'd realized before he'd gotten off Staten Island that he needed a little time to think and not come barreling in to her house angry and confused and so he'd gotten off the Turnpike and headed west, which is why he now found himself driving through south-central Pennsylvania in the dark of night.
"So you're sulking in the middle of Pennsyltucky," Peggy summarized. "You'll be in a great frame of mind to write sad country ballads about the dogs and trucks and women you've left behind. Are you ready to turn around yet? It'll be breakfast time by the time you get here. I can make us a fry-up."
Steve smiled. Peggy had told him that right around ninety, she'd decided that the list of things that could and probably would kill her was long enough that the odd extra rasher of bacon or fried breakfast wasn't going to crack the top ten. She'd never really learned to cook anything beyond breakfast, she'd freely confess, but what she did, she did well.
"I'm not ready to be so easily found," he admitted. By whom went unstated. "Or so easily recalled."
"They've probably got either your person or your bike tagged," Peggy reminded him, not hurt at the refusal because she'd understood what else he hadn't said.
"Probably," he agreed. "But dragging me back now involves admitting that they've got me tagged and then sending a jet and that's just not worth the effort unless it's really important."
The road was pretty deserted at this hour save for transport truckers and the odd bus. There was nothing to see, even by daylight, and while he'd probably stop in Pittsburgh to eat and stretch, if not sleep, the quiet and the relatively little attention that needed to be paid to the surroundings was soothing.
"Do you want to call me back when you're ready?"
He laughed, a little wildly to his own ears. "I don't think I'm ever going to be ready."
"Steve," Peggy prompted when he didn't elaborate.
He waited until he'd powered past a UPS trailer before saying anything. "Have you ever heard of the Winter Soldier?"
"The Cold War myth?" Peggy sounded genuinely perplexed. "Of course. He was the boogeyman it was easiest to blame all of our most embarrassing failures on. Why?"
And so he answered, a monologue that took him past the next toll and further away from the Helicarrier and the secrets it held.
Peggy was quiet when he finished.
"I'm trying to think of something, anything we could have done to at least realize what had happened," she said finally. "Because that has to be the first thing you were wondering, too."
"I don't think there was anything," Steve said, surprising himself a little by honestly believing it. "I'm not sure yet about the modern era, but back then, in our time? What could we have done? We looked for his body - even when we weren't supposed to be - because we never had any reason to think he'd survived the fall. Schmidt never got to turn him against me, not like he'd planned, at least. We'd both 'died' before that could happen. And then..."
And then Bucky had gone from being HYDRA's cruel joke to the Soviets' and any chance they'd have had to find him and bring him back disappeared. Steve still hadn't read all of the Winter Soldier material - it would be waiting for him, it had been assured - but he'd spent the afternoon talking with Natasha and gotten the overview beyond what Fury had tried to show him.
He'd also come away reminded of how he'd never really understand what the Cold War had really been like, what it had driven governments to do, how it had shaped the mindsets of the entire world, even after it ended, and it would be why he would always remain a stranger in this time no matter how good he got with technology. He'd been born in the ashes of the Great War and then reborn for the second go-round, but those had been hot wars with bombers and infantry platoons and rationing and perhaps, in some ways, it had been easier to know where the bullets were and that they were coming than to grow up waiting for a bomb that might or might not ever arrive.
"And then he did," Peggy finished. "Seventy-five years later."
"Yeah," Steve agreed.
"Don't you drive all night," Peggy said after a few moments. "And you had better come through Philly on the way back."
"Yes, ma'am."
He passed the split that would have taken him into Pittsburgh and thought about pushing through to Wheeling, but after nearly wiping out trying to avoid a distracted driver in a Kia (that might not have survived the experience of colliding with a supersoldier on a Harley), he took the next exit and wound up in a clean but dreary motel that did not have hourly rates. He'd asked the clerk if there was anywhere to eat at this hour and was told there was a 24-diner a few blocks away. The walk did his muscles good - he was sore now from all those hours in the saddle, but he'd be fine by the time he went to bed - and the pancakes and sausages did him better. He resisted the urge to pull out his tablet and start reading the Winter Soldier files, instead forcing himself to make sure the curtains were drawn tightly closed, the 'do not disturb' sign was on the door, his phone was off (and buried in his gear, because Tony was ever unwilling to take a hint) and got into bed without so much as checking his email.
He slept until 0830, showered and changed, checked out, and did not turn on either his tablet or his phone until he was back at the diner, this time for scrambled eggs and hash browns and more sausages and a stack of white bread toast slathered in salty butter and coffee that could strip paint. And strawberries that tasted like tartness and water because he'd gotten a little spoiled on greenmarket produce. He sent a note to Tapper saying that he was taking personal time and then dutifully caught up on his work emails until Tapper emailed back a confirmation, which came so quickly that there had to have been a prior discussion and Tapper hadn't had to run it up the food chain when Steve's email had arrived.
Over more coffee and a second stack of buttered toast, Steve pulled out his map - a paper one, since if he had his druthers, he'd prefer to see everything at once without having to finger-flick and resize - and plotted his course. Columbus, Cincinnati, Louisville, Nashville, Birmingham and then over to the coast and back up. (He did use the tablet to look up places to stop and eat in Cincinnati and then to stay in Nashville, where he'd probably spend the night.)
His phone started ringing when he was still in Ohio, but Steve ignored it. He knew the callers meant well - except for SHIELD HR - but he wasn't ready to talk about this yet to anyone not Peggy. And he wasn't sure he was even ready to confess all he thought and felt to her, although he had unfailing faith in her ability to see it anyway, which had been another reason to stay away.
Bucky was alive. This should have been the answer to his prayers - his best friend, his brother, alive and well and young in this time. And yet it was anything but.
"Are you prepared to fight him to the death?" Natasha had asked him as they'd walked through Prospect Park. "Because if you go after him, eventually you'll find him. Or he'll find you. And he's not just going to smile, nod, and agree to come back to the Helicarrier with you so SHIELD can mess with his head just because you say that he used to be someone else."
He'd pointed out that there were many possible outcomes to the two of them meeting, but Natasha hadn't been either swayed or distracted. "This is one of them. It's not even the worst one, but it's a possible one. Even a likely one. Certainly more likely than him suddenly remembering who he is or greeting you like the lost brother you are - you two have already met and he showed you no mercy.
"Which is why I am asking you now: are you prepared to fight him to the death? Because it may come to that, Steve. And you need to have that answer before it does."
He hadn't had that answer for Natasha and she'd had the grace to let it drop, although they'd both known that that had been a temporary reprieve. Because Natasha was right and he would have to know what he would do if Bucky tried to kill him for real, just as he'd have to know what he wanted to do if Bucky could not be rescued or, if they somehow brought him in, if he could not be saved. If Fury was right and Bucky had died in that fall and the Winter Soldier, Yasha Yachmenev, was just a stranger wearing Bucky's face, then there were a whole lot of hard decisions to be made. And as hard as they were, Steve wanted to be the one making them - or at least in the room when they were getting made - because he owed it to Bucky. And because he would have to live with the consequences.
As I-71 flowed into Kentucky, Steve wasn't sure if he was running toward an answer or from the question.
As for where it might or might not go, I am waging a completely irrational war between my canon whoredom and the shooting schedule of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which yes, I know, is working-titled 'Freezer Burn.' They are going to be completely different stories, save for the obvious Winter Soldier at the center of them both, but, well, I have issues explicitly running counter to canon. (Yes, I know, I am entirely too neurotic for a hobbyist writer.) It's why I twisted myself into knots in SGA trying to adhere to their stupidity. I have trouble writing 'well, that didn't happen' fic -- even more so when I actually liked what happened, which is generally the case with the Marvel Cinematic Universe stuff. And I really can't make up things that I know canon will cover later, like Lorne's first name. And the details of the Winter Soldier sort of dance between those lines and my own dalliance between comics and movies.
(DVD commentary note: Freezer Burn ended up the story it did entirely because I freaked out when they announced that Cap2 was going to be the Winter Soldier story. I changed the plot of my story entirely, which is why that ghost of a cameo never amounted to anything.)
Anyway, the tl;dr version is that I don't know if and how this goes on.
* I have a tumblr, which I have used exclusively as a fic announcement page until I posted this, entirely to see how it worked. As usual with social media, I seem to be missing the point because apparently one is not supposed to create original content for tumblr, instead repost someone else's. ;) But here I scanned in the image myself because I found it amusing.
* Ficlet! Which is actually not getting posted to the tumblr announcement page because it's not going up on AO3, I don't think, until -- or if -- there is more. It's 1800 words, which is a short drabble by my standards and it follows directly from this, which of course follows directly from this.
Freezer Burn deleted scene, extended edition (sorta)
1800 words; genfic/PG
Steve was somewhere between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh when the phone rang in his helmet. The tiny little illuminated screen on his windshield told him that it was Peggy, which was the only reason he answered.
"I got a phone call oh, about six hours ago, warning me that you might be en route and arriving in ill humor," Peggy began as soon as he said hello. "I asked why and was given a regretful sigh and the assurance that it would be better if I heard it from you first. I know the traffic on the Jersey Turnpike can be ugly, but I also know you."
Steve confessed that he'd realized before he'd gotten off Staten Island that he needed a little time to think and not come barreling in to her house angry and confused and so he'd gotten off the Turnpike and headed west, which is why he now found himself driving through south-central Pennsylvania in the dark of night.
"So you're sulking in the middle of Pennsyltucky," Peggy summarized. "You'll be in a great frame of mind to write sad country ballads about the dogs and trucks and women you've left behind. Are you ready to turn around yet? It'll be breakfast time by the time you get here. I can make us a fry-up."
Steve smiled. Peggy had told him that right around ninety, she'd decided that the list of things that could and probably would kill her was long enough that the odd extra rasher of bacon or fried breakfast wasn't going to crack the top ten. She'd never really learned to cook anything beyond breakfast, she'd freely confess, but what she did, she did well.
"I'm not ready to be so easily found," he admitted. By whom went unstated. "Or so easily recalled."
"They've probably got either your person or your bike tagged," Peggy reminded him, not hurt at the refusal because she'd understood what else he hadn't said.
"Probably," he agreed. "But dragging me back now involves admitting that they've got me tagged and then sending a jet and that's just not worth the effort unless it's really important."
The road was pretty deserted at this hour save for transport truckers and the odd bus. There was nothing to see, even by daylight, and while he'd probably stop in Pittsburgh to eat and stretch, if not sleep, the quiet and the relatively little attention that needed to be paid to the surroundings was soothing.
"Do you want to call me back when you're ready?"
He laughed, a little wildly to his own ears. "I don't think I'm ever going to be ready."
"Steve," Peggy prompted when he didn't elaborate.
He waited until he'd powered past a UPS trailer before saying anything. "Have you ever heard of the Winter Soldier?"
"The Cold War myth?" Peggy sounded genuinely perplexed. "Of course. He was the boogeyman it was easiest to blame all of our most embarrassing failures on. Why?"
And so he answered, a monologue that took him past the next toll and further away from the Helicarrier and the secrets it held.
Peggy was quiet when he finished.
"I'm trying to think of something, anything we could have done to at least realize what had happened," she said finally. "Because that has to be the first thing you were wondering, too."
"I don't think there was anything," Steve said, surprising himself a little by honestly believing it. "I'm not sure yet about the modern era, but back then, in our time? What could we have done? We looked for his body - even when we weren't supposed to be - because we never had any reason to think he'd survived the fall. Schmidt never got to turn him against me, not like he'd planned, at least. We'd both 'died' before that could happen. And then..."
And then Bucky had gone from being HYDRA's cruel joke to the Soviets' and any chance they'd have had to find him and bring him back disappeared. Steve still hadn't read all of the Winter Soldier material - it would be waiting for him, it had been assured - but he'd spent the afternoon talking with Natasha and gotten the overview beyond what Fury had tried to show him.
He'd also come away reminded of how he'd never really understand what the Cold War had really been like, what it had driven governments to do, how it had shaped the mindsets of the entire world, even after it ended, and it would be why he would always remain a stranger in this time no matter how good he got with technology. He'd been born in the ashes of the Great War and then reborn for the second go-round, but those had been hot wars with bombers and infantry platoons and rationing and perhaps, in some ways, it had been easier to know where the bullets were and that they were coming than to grow up waiting for a bomb that might or might not ever arrive.
"And then he did," Peggy finished. "Seventy-five years later."
"Yeah," Steve agreed.
"Don't you drive all night," Peggy said after a few moments. "And you had better come through Philly on the way back."
"Yes, ma'am."
He passed the split that would have taken him into Pittsburgh and thought about pushing through to Wheeling, but after nearly wiping out trying to avoid a distracted driver in a Kia (that might not have survived the experience of colliding with a supersoldier on a Harley), he took the next exit and wound up in a clean but dreary motel that did not have hourly rates. He'd asked the clerk if there was anywhere to eat at this hour and was told there was a 24-diner a few blocks away. The walk did his muscles good - he was sore now from all those hours in the saddle, but he'd be fine by the time he went to bed - and the pancakes and sausages did him better. He resisted the urge to pull out his tablet and start reading the Winter Soldier files, instead forcing himself to make sure the curtains were drawn tightly closed, the 'do not disturb' sign was on the door, his phone was off (and buried in his gear, because Tony was ever unwilling to take a hint) and got into bed without so much as checking his email.
He slept until 0830, showered and changed, checked out, and did not turn on either his tablet or his phone until he was back at the diner, this time for scrambled eggs and hash browns and more sausages and a stack of white bread toast slathered in salty butter and coffee that could strip paint. And strawberries that tasted like tartness and water because he'd gotten a little spoiled on greenmarket produce. He sent a note to Tapper saying that he was taking personal time and then dutifully caught up on his work emails until Tapper emailed back a confirmation, which came so quickly that there had to have been a prior discussion and Tapper hadn't had to run it up the food chain when Steve's email had arrived.
Over more coffee and a second stack of buttered toast, Steve pulled out his map - a paper one, since if he had his druthers, he'd prefer to see everything at once without having to finger-flick and resize - and plotted his course. Columbus, Cincinnati, Louisville, Nashville, Birmingham and then over to the coast and back up. (He did use the tablet to look up places to stop and eat in Cincinnati and then to stay in Nashville, where he'd probably spend the night.)
His phone started ringing when he was still in Ohio, but Steve ignored it. He knew the callers meant well - except for SHIELD HR - but he wasn't ready to talk about this yet to anyone not Peggy. And he wasn't sure he was even ready to confess all he thought and felt to her, although he had unfailing faith in her ability to see it anyway, which had been another reason to stay away.
Bucky was alive. This should have been the answer to his prayers - his best friend, his brother, alive and well and young in this time. And yet it was anything but.
"Are you prepared to fight him to the death?" Natasha had asked him as they'd walked through Prospect Park. "Because if you go after him, eventually you'll find him. Or he'll find you. And he's not just going to smile, nod, and agree to come back to the Helicarrier with you so SHIELD can mess with his head just because you say that he used to be someone else."
He'd pointed out that there were many possible outcomes to the two of them meeting, but Natasha hadn't been either swayed or distracted. "This is one of them. It's not even the worst one, but it's a possible one. Even a likely one. Certainly more likely than him suddenly remembering who he is or greeting you like the lost brother you are - you two have already met and he showed you no mercy.
"Which is why I am asking you now: are you prepared to fight him to the death? Because it may come to that, Steve. And you need to have that answer before it does."
He hadn't had that answer for Natasha and she'd had the grace to let it drop, although they'd both known that that had been a temporary reprieve. Because Natasha was right and he would have to know what he would do if Bucky tried to kill him for real, just as he'd have to know what he wanted to do if Bucky could not be rescued or, if they somehow brought him in, if he could not be saved. If Fury was right and Bucky had died in that fall and the Winter Soldier, Yasha Yachmenev, was just a stranger wearing Bucky's face, then there were a whole lot of hard decisions to be made. And as hard as they were, Steve wanted to be the one making them - or at least in the room when they were getting made - because he owed it to Bucky. And because he would have to live with the consequences.
As I-71 flowed into Kentucky, Steve wasn't sure if he was running toward an answer or from the question.
As for where it might or might not go, I am waging a completely irrational war between my canon whoredom and the shooting schedule of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which yes, I know, is working-titled 'Freezer Burn.' They are going to be completely different stories, save for the obvious Winter Soldier at the center of them both, but, well, I have issues explicitly running counter to canon. (Yes, I know, I am entirely too neurotic for a hobbyist writer.) It's why I twisted myself into knots in SGA trying to adhere to their stupidity. I have trouble writing 'well, that didn't happen' fic -- even more so when I actually liked what happened, which is generally the case with the Marvel Cinematic Universe stuff. And I really can't make up things that I know canon will cover later, like Lorne's first name. And the details of the Winter Soldier sort of dance between those lines and my own dalliance between comics and movies.
(DVD commentary note: Freezer Burn ended up the story it did entirely because I freaked out when they announced that Cap2 was going to be the Winter Soldier story. I changed the plot of my story entirely, which is why that ghost of a cameo never amounted to anything.)
Anyway, the tl;dr version is that I don't know if and how this goes on.