#but i like being able to draw on my tablet while my main monitor plays like a vid or smth

[milktoast-femboy]

oh boy, isn’t today just a wonderful day for my tablet to just not work correctly! fun stuff!

[physicsandfandoms]

♦ and ☯ for all three of the Umbra gang!

♦ - quirks/hobbies 

Khlora: She likes to mess around with mechanical stuff, and in her free time will often be in the droid workshop or Temple hanger bay. She’ll tinker in the droid workshop and ask to be given a useful task in the hanger bay. She’s friends with some of the non-Jedi mechanics who work in the hanger bay because of this. She’s also a doodler, and likes to read mystery novels.

As for quirks, her biology is sometimes one big ???, even to herself since she is a Iridonian Zabrak/Human hybrid. My thought on that is [first of all, fuck the entire concept of Nightsisters being human/Dathomirian Zabrak hybrids, that doesn’t make any sense biology wise.] Human/Zabrak hybrids would probably only be possible with a Zabrak mom and human dad for a viable offspring, and even then I would imagine that the two hearts thing is always kind of a crapshoot. She would have a lot more well child checkups than the rest of the younglings, the Temple healers would be carefully monitoring that organs (the two hearts especially) were developing at the same pace as the rest of her growth because I can imagine that would vary from person to person and could turn into a big mess quickly. I would think that hybrids would just be a bit more petite in their Zabrak characteristics than full Zabraks, and there is concern especially during growth spurts that the mess of genetics might hiccup in the form of hearts development being outpaced by the rest of her growth, or vice versa.

Non-Zabraks probably wouldn’t pick up that Khlora isn’t full Zabrak, but other Zabraks definitely know, and I think there would be some prejudice against that out in the galaxy. In the Temple she is fully welcomed, but the larger galaxy can be a less great place. 

Zabraks are carnivores, and humans are omnivores. My thought would be that hybrids can be somewhat omnivorous, but their food pyramid is still heavily weighted towards meat. Other high protein foods like nuts/space tofu/dairy are probably fine, and I would imagine that the human side of things needs fruits and veggies, so the main digestive upset would be anything grain related. I would imagine it somewhat like lactose intolerance though where many (Khlora included) would take an enzyme tablet, YOLO, and eat what they want.

Cy: He is a big language nerd and really has a talent for it. He grew up speaking Basic in the creche, but one of his (and Raen’s) clan mates was a Wookiee and while most of the other kids could comprehend a fair amount without a little translator droid, Cy was able to pick it up very quickly, but of course can’t reproduce the sounds himself. When he was 12ish, it was a Wookiee Master, Arriaddik, who chose him as her Padawan, which is fairly rare for a Wookiee to pick a human. During his apprenticeship he became fluent in Huttese and the most common Ryloth/Twi’lek trade language. During knighthood he studied a smattering of other languages to the point of passability, but never became fluent in Mandalorian, Rodian, and others. After getting to know youngling Khlora he picked the dominant Iridonian language as his next to be completely fluent in.

For quirks, I guess this falls into that category, of the three of them, Cy is the only one who had mental health issues before the war starts. Anxiety and depression have always been something that he has to manage, but he does manage it pretty well. Having Raen as someone he can fall back on for support helps a lot.

Raen: Because they are primarily a Healer, keeping up on their sparring qualifies as more of a hobby since the majority of healers don’t. They went for full knighthood before training as a healer, and they think it is important to keep up their fighting abilities. Force healing is draining work though, even for those like Raen with a natural disposition for it, so finding the time and energy to spar is something that they really have to prioritize or it doesn’t happen. Cy is of course their favorite sparring partner, but they do frequently spar with whomever they can find because the two of them are at that point where they know how the other fights well enough that it is a lot more of a challenge to spar with others. 

They play a plucked string instrument, something like an acoustic guitar but with a gentler sound. Outside of the medical realm their academic interests include the equivalent of environmental science.

☯ - likes/dislikes 

Khlora: She likes to wander around the streets of Coruscant and people watch. She likes math and history, and blasting loud music in her room (to Cy’s annoyance). She does like learning about and feeling connected to her Zabrak culture, and Jedi culture as well. She has an interest in Jedi archeology but that isn’t something she gets to pursue very often because of the War. 

She dislikes feeling like she’s really kind of helpless in this Galactic scale conflict. She hates seeing how many lives are destroyed by this war. She was only 16 when the war started, but that is old enough to really understand how the Jedi Order has changed due to the War and it really concerns her.

Cy: He likes to just be at peace in nature with a cup of nice herbal tea and people he cares about. He likes literature, and loves learning new things. Plants and tea make him happy. He loves Raen and Khlora and during the War he is most content when he knows they’re both safe. 

He dislikes eels, there was An Incident when he was a youngling. He dislikes sentients who use their power to oppress and harm others. He is so tired of this war. Cy is one of the Jedi who refused to have a full Battalion and be assigned the rank of General, he’s not suited for it. He’s not suited for full scale war at all. Compromise was found in him leading a squad of clones (the standard 9) which forced him into the role of Sergeant and then Khlora respectively as a Corporal. He still hates it, even if the majority of missions he is assigned are off of the front lines and typically aligned with cleaning up the aftermath of battles and helping surviving civilians. He consoles himself with the fact that he takes care of his squad of clones the best he can and that he’s doing what he can to help people.  Additionally, the clean up jobs sometimes have Raen assigned with him, which always makes things more bearable. 

Raen: They like to cook and play music. They do really love leaving the Temple and doing relief work out in the Galaxy, especially when they’re teamed up with Cy. They love Khlora as if she was their own Padawan as well.

They dislike idiots like Skywalker and Kenobi that they have to hunt down to give medical treatment to. (Okay, they like Kenobi as a person, but the healers draw straws for who’s turn it is to deal with his and his Padawan’s bullshit).

They definitely preferred their work before the war started. Before the war, much of what they did as a healer outside the Temple was relief work for areas that had experienced natural disasters, plagues, or wars. They really felt fulfilled in life doing that. During the war, they spent much of their time patching up injuries of clones and fellow Jedi, which horrifies them. They had seen grotesque injuries before, but it is just so constant, it makes them sick. Thinking about how the clones are used by the Republic makes them sick in general as well.

[tapwrites]

XP-Pen Artist 10S v2

Yeah... that’s a mouthful ain’t it?

I recently got myself a graphics tablet... with a SCREEN!! I’ve been wanting one of those since I knew they existed, but for the longest time only the insanely-priced Cintiqs were available.

In recent years, it turns out, other manufacturers have branched into screened graphics tablets also--slowly bringing down the price to an attainable level.

I got my Artist 10S for £199.99 from Amazon. Let me tell you how it went.

From the Top

I have done art before. I was half-decent at it when I was around 10 or so. But it’s been a while. I got myself a decent “dotted” sketchbook and started sketching things out in it to run my RPG sessions. That’s really what gave me the bug to get into drawing again. And to actually buy a tablet to do so!

I downloaded Krita, a free Photoshop-like application for artists. It’s super-powerful, once you figure out how it works. But there are plenty of tutorials online about that if you’re interested in checking it out.

...But anyway, Krita has some nice smoothing algorithms you can turn on for drawing with a pen tablet. The pen doesn’t have tilt and rotation detection, but pressure sensitivity works well with Krita and gives me plenty of expressiveness to get on with. And I was pretty instantly busting out some sweet curves!

It was a pretty amazing experience, really--getting to draw freehand while also having the capability of undo, erase, etc. I’m not saying it brought a tear to my eye, but it was a nice moment.  😂

Config

The tablet has 6 “Express Keys” along the side, which are configurable to key combinations. When you hold them down, that key is held down (this’ll become important later). I currently have them set to things like canvas pan/zoom/rotate, and a couple of other “hold to use” shortcuts.

The pen is somewhat triangular along the barrel, meaning it won’t roll around on your desk. But it’s smoothed out enough to feel just fine in your hand. It has two barrel buttons, though these are only configurable to mouse various clicks and a preset “brush/eraser” toggle (which didn’t work with Krita out of the box). There is no “eraser” button at the other end (like a pencil with an eraser at the other end)... but I’d find that too fiddly and time consuming to flip it around anyway.

The lack of options for the pen is a little disappointing. Things like this are insanely easy to implement in code--as demonstrated by the express key options. So there’s not really any excuse for it other than the company being small, and this product originally belonging to a different company XP-Pen... bought out or something? I dunno. We’ll get onto them in due course.

Oh, a little side note... the configuration app is only readily accessible from a system tray icon (in Windows). This is fine when you first install the drivers. (And then install the updated drivers so the tablet actually works.) But it has a habit of just... disappearing. After Hibernation or Sleep, that icon tends to wander off somewhere.

And all XP-Pen have to say on that score is to give instructions on how to make it appear again--which only works half the time and may require a restart anyway. I’ve since figured out where the config application itself is kept, and made a shortcut to it in my start menu. In case anyone else is having the same troubles as me, here’s the file path: “C:\Windows\SysWOW64\tabcfg.exe”

Screen

This tablet has a screen! Still getting over that XD

The screen is only 10.1″ corner to corner, which is a little smaller than the average screen tablet such as the Cintiqs. But it’s plenty big enough when it’s sitting right in front of your for actual drawing.

Another reason I pulled the trigger on buying one of these is to get a second screen. I often watch various Youtube videos in the background while I’m playing games and whatnot. I used to prop my Chromebook up next to my regular monitor. This worked fine, but pausing everything when someone came in to speak to me (just a politeness thing I like to employ; nothing sneaky going on)... was a bit of a hassle. And balancing the audio between devices had its own fiddliness (besides the piddly Chromebook speakers not being able to get loud enough for quieter videos).

But now, with two monitors hooked up to the same computer, everything’s a lot easier. I can move windows between screens easily enough. And pausing a video is as simple as moving the mouse over to the other screen and clicking.

Colour Calibration

However! I am having some trouble with the colours. I was drawing away just fine, a simple cartoon character to try out the shading tools and so on and get used to Krita. Then for whatever reason, I saw the picture on my main monitor. The skin tone was way off--too red for what I was actually going for. It seems the tablet screen likes to give everything a yellow tint--making picking colours pretty tricky.

I’ve tried keeping a preview window open on my main monitor so I can see the “true” colours, but this is really not conducive to a productive work space. Or something ^^

I spend a few days trying to configure the colour management side of things from Windows and NVIDIA (the tablet has back light brightness buttons and that’s it)... but it’s just darned fiddly! I can never quite be sure if it looks right or not--or if both screens at least look similar. All I want is a “click on a colour on the screen, and remove some yellowness from it.” You wouldn’t have thought it would be that hard to do, would you?

But instead I had to use gamma, brightness, and contrast sliders. I think I get brightness and contrast... and I thought I knew what gamma was. But it just never turns out quite how I expect. All I want is a step-by-step tutorial on “First, get your gamma correct across all colours. Here’s how you do that...” And so on and so forth.

There are plenty of test-card images out there, which are a good start. But nothing giving you a list of instructions.

See, if you fix the brightness and contrast, it doesn’t necessarily mean things look right. So then you mess with the gamma and nothing makes sense any more. It seems as though you need to adjust all 3 at the same time to be sure you’re actually making any progress.

I even had a Windows bug where my colours wouldn’t stick. I had to create a new user account (with all the headaches of setting things up all over again) just to fix that issue and make any progress whatsoever!

/sigh/

And this doesn’t even talk about the contrast issues it already has. No matter what I do, it’s too bright in some areas and too dark in others. And with my colours fixed the way they are now, they look closer to my main monitor but not perfect. And they make some things just look a tad awful, across the board.

I’m managing, though. Using it for art--at least black and white art--is great, and as long as I focus on the tablet itself, the colours work just fine.

I did contact XP-Pen, to see if they had a solution. Most companies allow you to download an .icc file--a colour profile so the computer can correct a monitor’s output perfectly--but they just straight-up don’t. After 3 workdays of waiting, they told me to use Windows’ built-in calibration tools--which of course I’d been bashing my head against for the past week.

In case anyone else is having similar colour problems, I’ll give you the settings I used to half-fix it. Note that this is far from perfect, but it certainly seems a lot better than it was before, to my eye.

As I have an NVIDIA graphics card, I used their control panel to change the settings to the following values:

Red: 85% Brightness, 25% Contrast, 0.69 Gamma.

Green: 62% Brightness, 25% Contrast, 0.89 Gamma.

Blue: 90% Brightness, 25% Contrast, 0.72 Gamma.

I think the “All channels” part is just an average of the 3 colours. But in case it’s not...

All channels: 77% Brightness, 25% Contrast, 0.76 Gamma.

XP-Pen

That brings me onto the company itself. From what I understand, they’re a small company out of China? Or maybe the US? Or both? It’s really hard to tell from their website.

But anyway... I can only assume they’re too small a company to really provide decent support for their products. The response time is way too high, considering the price tags attached to their products. And the “shrug” attitude instead of providing solutions didn’t go down well with me.

Now, there are devices out there that calibrate a screen for you. The cheapest I could find is £90, and comes with a single-computer license. And that’s fair enough; most people don’t need them, and the ones that really need them are photography professionals who have to be willing to shell out some cash or produce poor work. But I’d prefer not to have to get one just to use it once and never look at it again.

The thing is, with this calibration thing, XP-Pen saying something very telling to the customer. They aren’t willing to get a calibration tool themselves, use it on a tablet, and make the resulting .icc file available for all of their customers to use--at least as a good starting point. Instead, they insist that each individual customer buys one themselves if they want any hope of getting relatively accurate colours from their purchase.

I may contact them again, to point this out to them. I mean, it may be that my unit is simply faulty and should be replaced... but then it should be replaced.

/sigh again/

Overall

I am happy with using the tablet. The tech is amazing, for the price. But such a lack of support is really dragging down the experience.

I highly recommend getting a screen tablet. If not this one, then perhaps another. Maybe your Artist 10S won’t have this issue at all and it’ll be perfect right off the bat.

It’s so awesome to be able to draw on your screen, and has really helped me get back into art-ing. I can already see improvement in my skill over the past week, through drawing every day after such a long time not drawing at all!

[cuthian]

In Hell, We Stand by You Chapter Seven

Hi! *waves*

I'm sorry for the delay, but as I said, most of this chapter needed to be rewritten to fit the storyline properly. I hope you guys enjoy! I am going home from Vienna tomorrow, which is a fifteen-hour busride, so I hope I'll be able to do most of the work that still needs to be done on chapter eight then!

In the mean time, enjoy the extra long chapter, and thank you for sticking with me!

Love, Annaelle

PS Much, much love to @juuls for putting up with me and beta'ing this monster! I couldn't do it without you, doll <3

Chapter Seven

—————

Passes to the opening gala for Kunst Halle Planie’s new exhibition, ‘die Altes Kunst des Mesopotamie’, sold out like hotcakes three hours after they had been made available to the public. It was Stuttgart’s most anticipated event, both by art history enthusiasts and historians alike, with planned guest speakers such a Dr. Heinrich Schäfer, who was instrumental in restoring some of the Mesopotamian artwork displayed, and Dr. Richard S. Ellis, who wrote extensively on the subject of Mesopotamian art and its archaeological impact.

…Once inside, however, the main attraction did not turn out to be, as expected, the artwork and the carefully planned speeches, but rather an as of yet unknown man who attacked Dr. Schäfer in the middle of the man’s speech. In a rather gruesome turn, Dr. Schäfer’s eye was gauged out and the man, who clearly displayed some sort of superhuman ability, subdued the frightened crowd.

…Our reporters were not at the scene, but eyewitnesses speak of blinding lights and the same man appearing before them in an outfit which would not have been out of place at a Renaissance fair. All seemed quite hopeless until one man stepped in…

Captain America himself.

There has been no confirmation whether this man was sent by the U.S. government or if the mantle of Captain America has finally been taken up by someone else after seventy years, but whoever he was, he did not seem to be a match for the unknown man until none other than Tony Stark’s Iron Man stepped in and the unknown man was taken into custody.

…Many unanswered questions yet remain, but one thing is certain, Kunst Halle Planie’s gala will not soon be forgotten.

—S. Auerbach, Der Spiegel, ‘Artful chaos at museum gala’

—————

S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier, International Airspace Steve

Steve’s entire body was sore, and he felt like he could easily sleep an entire day away. He took great care to hide that exhaustion, eyeing the screen that showed Fury conversing with Loki.

The alien God’s smug disposition made Steve’s skin crawl and he had to actively fight the urge to yank at the tight uniform he’d been squeezed into, to rid himself of the proverbial box Loki had shoved him into with nothing more than a few careless words.

The soldier. A man out of time.

Steve hadn’t felt like he was a man out of time since the first few weeks after he’d been defrosted, before he’d moved in with Becca and before he’d started therapy.

He’d been doing good.

He hadn’t felt out of place in a long while, but Loki’s words had somehow shoved him right back in that destructive mindset, and he was struggling to pull himself out before he became compromised.

It was like Loki saw past all of the progress he’d made, past all of the carefully-erected barriers he had pulled up around the wounded remains of the man he used to be, the man he’d always wanted to be, and saw right into the core of who he actually was—who he had always been.

It was entirely unnerving.

He shifted his seat back a little and glanced towards Becca, who was chewing her lower lip and glaring at the tiny Loki on the screen as her hands curled into loose fists on the table. She was paler than she had been when they’d arrived and she looked about as exhausted as Steve felt. She had, thankfully, not been beaten up by a Norse God, so far, so Steve considered that a win.

He could tell she was still worried though, her concern for Clint outweighing her rational thinking.  Coulson and three other agents had been forced to hold her back when they escorted Loki to his cell.

Steve couldn’t blame her.

He’d probably try to beat answers out of Loki too, if he thought it would actually help save lives.

They’d only been on this mission for less than twelve hours, but Steve already felt like several weeks’ worth of events had taken place, shattering the little bubble of peace he had created for himself.

Lord, he was tired.

The monitor went black and it almost felt like some of the tension lodged between Steve’s shoulders dissipated along with the image of the dark-haired God, although the atmosphere at the table remained tense. They had all been taken aback by Loki’s easy surrender in Stuttgart and Thor’s sudden appearance midflight, and it showed on the faces around the table.

Becca’s sharp focus on Loki notwithstanding, even Agent Hill, who Steve had actually met once on a run, unaware of who she was—he’d done an actual double-take when he’d been introduced to her on the bridge—looked like she was trying to solve an intricate, complicated riddle, tapping at the screen of her tablet impatiently.

Romanoff almost looked indifferent, but Steve spotted her fingers twitching against her upper arm a few times, almost like she wanted to reach out and punch Loki as much as the rest of them did.

Thor looked most disturbed by the conversation and was frowning something fierce, and Steve wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about this other God. Coulson had sworn up and down that Thor was to be trusted, that he had already proven himself an ally to earth, but Steve was still doubtful.

There was something about the taller man that unnerved Steve entirely.

Something that had made his mouth go dry the moment he had actually gotten a chance to look at the new, possibly slightly less homicidal, Asgardian arrival. Something that made his heart pound in his chest so loudly he was almost sure Thor would have been able to hear it when he shook Steve’s hand. It was something Steve hadn’t felt since before he had been forced to watch the love of his life fall off a cliff when Steve failed to save him.

He’d found his eyes lingering on the other man’s—admittedly incredibly impressive—biceps for just a beat too long, and it made him feel nauseous. He didn’t want to feel attracted to anyone but Bucky.

“He really grows on you, doesn’t he?” Dr. Banner drawled sardonically, stalking away from the monitor with jerked, short movements, drawing Steve’s attention back to him. The doctor had been relatively quiet up to this point, and Steve had to admit the doctor’s levelheaded temperament surprised him greatly, after everything he had heard so far.

“Yeah,” Becca snorted beside him, kicking up her foot to rest against the back of Steve’s armrest. “Like a fucking fungus.”

Steve’s lips curled up into an involuntary smile before he forced himself to focus on the problem at hand. He sighed and looked up at Thor, who still stood at the head of the table, hands clenching into fists uselessly. “He’s gonna try to drag this out, isn’t he?” He waited until Thor’s eyes met his and shook his head a little. “What’s his play, Thor?”

Everyone collectively turned from the screen to look at the tall, exceptionally handsome—and Lord, he needed to get his head back in the game, because this was not the time—God of Thunder.

“It seems he has procured an army, called the Chitauri,” Thor finally spoke with a heavy sigh, his tone grave as he crossed his arms across his chest. “They’re not of Asgard or any world known. From what we understand, he means to lead them against your people.” There was a note of sorrow to his words, something deep and painful that made Steve feel a little queasy. “They are to win Earth for him,” Thor continued, shaking his head sadly. “In return, I suspect, for the Tesseract.”

“An army…” Steve sighed and leaned back in his seat. “How do you know about this? You said, earlier… you said you thought he was dead for over a year.”

Everyone at the table froze, and Becca’s foot dropped back to the floor with an audible thump. Steve could tell everyone was surprised that he questioned the man further, but he’d learned a long time never to take information at face value.

Not checking someone’s motivation for volunteering information could get him and the others killed—it had gotten others killed in the past, during… before.

Thor, however, didn’t seem at all put out by Steve’s insistence on questioning him further—he seemed pretty damn delighted—and beamed a bright grin at Steve. “A most astute observation, Captain.” He sobered quickly, fingers twitching towards his neck in an aborted gesture Steve recognized all too well before he spoke again. “I believed my brother dead for… too long. My mother...”

He took a deep, shuddering breath and smiled weakly. “Our mother and Loki share a connection I cannot understand. She knew he was alive, and it was she who uncovered his plot. Father and Heimdall sent me here as soon as we realised he had already begun his assault on Earth.”

Thor kept his gaze on Steve as he spoke, his tone even other than the moments his breath hitched in clear emotional distress. Steve appreciated the God’s candor, and though he could tell the man was being truthful, there was something he wasn’t telling them too. The look in Thor’s eye was one Steve recognized, though, and he was loathe to push someone to open up about their grief.

He couldn’t imagine finding himself in Thor’s shoes.

Slowly, he leaned back in his seat and offered the other man a tight smile. “Okay. So, an army?”

“From outer space, no less,” Becca piped up beside him, and Steve could see her leaning forward eagerly from the corner of his eye. “How is he doing that?”

The discussion rapidly devolved into a series of back and forths with scientific terms that flew right over his head, but the implication sank in nonetheless. If Loki managed to get the things that he needed to open the portal, he would be able to bring an army of monsters to Earth to destroy and take over everything Steve had fought for—everything he was still learning and growing to love.

The nausea he’d felt earlier welled back up again at the thought of Becky’s cozy little home being torn apart by monsters, of his family—the little he had left—being taken from him…

Was he destined to lose everything he cared about twice?

Because of one man’s delusions of grandeur?

Eighty people were already dead, and Loki had only been on earth for two days.

Imagining the amount of havoc he could wreak with an entire army backing him up and unlimited time in their world was downright terrifying.

He was abruptly drawn from his thoughts when Tony Stark flounced inside, immediately engaging Dr. Banner before Becca dropped the thin veneer of professionalism and launched herself off her seat and into the dark-haired man’s arms with a sound that Steve could only describe as a squeal.

The sight of the genius stumbling back a step or two, arms sticking straight ahead for a few seconds before he folded them around Becca and patted her back lightly was nothing short of comical.

Steve had heard a few things about Tony from Becca over the weeks they’d lived together, and though they may not have gotten off to the best start in Stuttgart, it was easy to see the open affection on the billionaire’s face at Becca’s enthusiasm, even if the hug itself seemed to make him slightly uncomfortable. “Hey kiddo,” Stark said quietly—so quietly Steve doubted anyone but Becca and Steve himself had heard him—as he pushed her off gently.

“Is that your gear for the field—this… this isn’t even bulletproof,” he tugged on the strap of Becca’s vest with a sneer, shaking his head decisively. “Becs, that won’t do. I can do better. You need to come by the Tower, I’ll make you something better. You need new toys, and Aunt Peggy would kill me if I let something happen to her favorite godchild.”

Steve narrowly suppressed the urge to chuckle at the downright offended look on Agent Coulson’s face, but the casual mention of Peggy made his heart clench and drew his attention away again.

He knew she was alive.

It was one of the first things Becky had told him when he’d emerged from his self-imposed exile again.

He hadn’t seen her. She lived in England, and though he had heard Becca talk to her on the phone several times, he’d declined every time she offered to let him speak to her as well. He didn’t think… he didn’t think he could handle hearing Peggy’s voice, cracked with age, so unlike the vibrant young woman she still was in his mind.

He’d seen her only a few months ago—seen her as a beautiful twenty-four year-old woman. He didn’t think he could handle seeing her as a ninety-three year-old yet.

He watched, feeling slightly detached from the entire situation, as Stark patted Thor’s massive bicep with slightly widened eyes—and Steve felt an odd sense of vindication to know he wasn’t the only one affected by the god's… exceptional appearance—before moving on to tap at every screen he passed, blathering on about something or the other before calling out a S.H.I.E.L.D. tech for playing…

Steve honestly didn’t know what the young man was supposedly playing, and he didn’t really care.

He glanced down at his tablet and tried to make sense of the scientific notes Becca had sent to him, but they went way over his head, again. He’d tried not to feel out of his depth before, but after facing Loki and getting his ass handed to him, after nearly being electrocuted by Thor and after hearing the kind of science Dr. Banner and Stark talked about like they were simply discussing their favorite TV show…

He glanced around the table surreptitiously, eyeing the spies, the agents, the god, the geniuses, and he wondered where the hell he came in.

He looked down at his tablet again and sighed.

What the hell was he doing here?

—————

Steve

He’d sequestered himself in an abandoned little corner of the Helicarrier as soon as he could reasonably excuse himself, his hands trembling by the time he’d managed to find the privacy he’d been desperately craving.

Before he’d been able to escape the frenzied melee of the bridge, a bright-eyed, fresh-faced S.H.I.E.L.D. agent had appeared before him, stuttering and blushing as they offered him a small moleskin notebook full of their favorite movies, books, TV shows and music.

“Suggestions,” they’d said with bright red cheeks. “For things to try in the 21st century.”

It had been a gesture of kindness, Steve was sure, but after Loki’s words, the little black book served only as a further reminder that he wasn’t home. He didn’t belong here, in this century, and he hadn’t felt that this keenly since the first day after he’d been… woken up.

He had smiled, though, and taken the notebook with forced cheer, words of thanks falling from his lips without much thought or sincerity behind them, before he’d been able to slip away.

The little nook he’d found was not too far from where the prisoner—Loki—was being held, so he’d be available right away if there was any kind of emergency, but isolated enough that he wouldn’t be disturbed until he was good and ready to face another person.

He’d initially planned to stick to his intended path, deeper into the bowels of the Helicarrier, but he’d been sidetracked by the raised voices by the door where Loki was being held. He’d intended to go inside, to see why someone was stupid enough to provoke the very dangerous, very volatile prisoner, but had backed off almost immediately when he recognized Thor’s voice and hid in his easily-overlooked alcove around the corner.

He may not have been privy to their family issues, but he understood enough to realise that if anyone would be able to get what they needed from the Trickster, it would be Thor.

“Please—be—think—Loki!”

Even with his enhanced hearing, Steve could barely make out Thor’s impassioned words, and with some difficulty, he managed to draw his attention back to himself, his breath punching out of his lungs in a quick, sharp exhale when he realized his trembling fingers had taken the pencil and paper in his hands as permission to begin sketching again.

Bucky’s eyes—a messy, slightly skewed rendition—stared up at him from the page of the little notebook, and Steve suddenly felt lightheaded, small and weak like he hadn’t felt in years.

“Was this what it was like?” he whispered to the doodle of Bucky’s eyes, helpless tears burning in his eyes. “Was this what you felt like when I got the serum?” He knew Bucky had struggled with reconciling the idea of his skinny little fella back in Brooklyn with the tall, muscled soldier that had pulled him out of the factory in Azzano at first; that the protective instinct Bucky had nursed for nearly a decade and a half had been difficult to shake—if not impossible.

He’d told Steve, once, that it was ridiculous, trying to wrap his head around Steve being stronger than him when he’d been able to pick Steve up with one arm for most of their life together.

Steve had never really understood the feeling.

Until now.

He’d always been the strongest in whatever fight he picked after he’d received the serum.

He hadn’t been outmatched by anyone since 1944, and he couldn’t quite wrap his head around being so entirely out of his league when it came to Loki—and Thor, by extension.

The god had tossed him around like a damn ragdoll.

He was so ridiculously out of his league it was almost laughable.

When he looked down at the little notebook again, he realized he had doodled a fairly accurate depiction of Bucky’s face, down to the slightest hint of the pout of his lower lip which Steve had always been powerless to resist. “Lord, I miss you,” Steve breathed, trailing his fingers across the sharp line of Bucky’s jaw. “I’m outta my league, Buck. I don’t know what to do.”

His drawing of Bucky, of course, didn’t reply, nor did it give him any sudden insights.

He sighed and leaned his head back against the wall, eyes slipping shut as he took a few deep breaths to steady himself, as Karen-the-therapist had taught him to do when he felt overwhelmed.

Before he could properly steady himself, though, the door to the room Loki was being held in slammed open, banging against the metal wall with such an almighty bang! it made Steve jump, hitting his head against the top of the little alcove hard.

“Damn it!” he cried out, dropping the notebook and pencil as he fell back, cradling his sore head in his hands with tears of shock burning in his eyes.

“Captain!”

Through blurred eyes he watched as a large, blond blob with Thor’s voice hurried towards him, settling on his knees before Steve. “I did not mean to startle you. I apologize. I hope you did not injure yourself severely?” The words were phrased as a question, but Steve could feel Thor’s fingers gently push his own aside to search for injuries along his scalp.

He diligently ignored how good it felt to be touched with tenderness by someone other than Becca or Becky—something Karen-the-therapist had pointed out he might benefit from.

“I’m fine,” he told Thor slightly sourly, closing his fingers around the god’s thick wrists and pulling them down. “It’ll barely leave a lump.”

Thor sat back and smiled brightly, nodding happily. “Excellent. I shall not detain you any longer, then.” The taller man made to get to his feet, likely to leave Steve to his solitude and his increasingly loud thoughts, and suddenly Steve couldn’t stand the idea of being alone anymore.

“Wait,” he blurted, hand shooting out to curl his fingers around Thor’s wrist again. “I heard you…” He nodded towards Loki’s cell sheepishly and smiled tightly when Thor looked at him with wide, alarmed eyes. “I ain’t no snitch,” he said quickly. “I doubt S.H.I.E.L.D. has any business putting their noses in the mess between you and him, but…”

He bit his lip and shrugged. “I get what it’s like to be… the odd man out. If you needed someone to talk to, without judgement...” His cheeks burned and he was almost afraid to look up at Thor, but he did so anyway, because Sarah Rogers didn’t raise no coward. “I’m willing to listen.”

He wasn’t sure why he’d extended the invitation—he hardly felt like good company at the moment—but he was pretty sure Thor wouldn’t care all too much.

Something told him that the man would have very few preconceptions about Steve, and that if he did wish for Steve’s company, he’d want it because he liked Steve Rogers, not Captain America.

It was a refreshing change.

Even with the Barneses, there was a certain amount of expectation, a certain image he had to live up to, regardless of how many times they’d tried to tell him he didn’t—

He was so tired of trying to be several versions of himself.

Thor was silent for a few moments longer before he nodded, settling himself cross-legged on the floor before Steve. “Much appreciated, Captain.” He reached out and retrieved the notebook and pencil from where they’d landed when Steve had dropped them, eyes lingering on the sketch of Bucky before he handed it back to Steve with a sad smile.

“Your fallen mate, I take it?” Thor asked with a gentleness that belied the directness of the question.

Steve nodded jerkily, dragging his fingers across Bucky’s likeness one more time before he snapped the book shut and refocused his attention on Thor. “It’s been a long time.”

“Not, I think, for you.” Thor said softly, patting his hand on top of Steve’s, the sadness in his eye reflecting and mirroring Steve’s own. From what Steve had gathered, Thor’s own loss was felt as keenly as Steve’s, even if his brother was still alive and breathing on the other end of the door.

“No,” Steve admitted quietly. “Not for me.”

Thor nodded in understanding and sighed heavily. “It is, sadly, a feeling I know too well.” He glanced over his shoulder, in Loki’s general direction before he continued. “I mourned my brother for a year before I learned he lived, but now… You must understand.” He leaned forward and looked at Steve pleadingly. “I have spent over a thousand years with Loki by my side. I know him better than he knows himself—I knew of his jealousy, his hurt, his designs on the throne, and I failed to take them seriously… but I have never seen him like… like this.”

Thor waved one large hand in the Trickster’s general direction before dropping it again.

“Loki has always been many things,” Thor sighed, “but he has never been a cold-blooded killer.”

Steve opened his mouth, though he wasn’t sure what he wanted to say, but Thor interrupted him before he could speak, a look that was disturbingly human and relatable flashing across the god’s features before vanishing entirely. “I know, I’ve been told of his various misdeeds in the past two days, but he is not like himself. Something is odd about my brother, and I do not know what it is.”  

Steve fell silent, unsure of what to say to that.

He knew, intimately, what it felt like to have the most important person in the world to you ripped away, and it wasn’t a feeling he wished on anyone.

“Have you raised your concerns with Fury?” he asked, instead of questioning Thor’s judgement, because Steve was pretty sure he wouldn’t listen to anyone if they tried to tell him Bucky was evil either. Thor had spent the better part of a millennium with Loki—who the hell was Steve, a stranger who hadn’t even lived three decades, to tell him he was wrong about the man?

Thor frowned impressively and nodded. “He insisted my judgement was awry, but I am not some young whelp. Despite my faults, I know him. I snuck in to speak to my brother myself, to convince him to undo this madness, but it is as though it has mingled with his blood and burned itself into his bones. I do not know what madness grasps my brother, but I know it is not his doing. Not entirely.”

Frustration towards Fury boiled to the surface of Steve’s mind again, and his hands curled into fists before he calmed himself. He didn’t need to trust Fury to help the rest of the team get the Tesseract back and ensure it fell into the right hands. He certainly didn’t need Fury’s opinion to listen to Thor and believe the other man.

He reached out and clasped Thor’s forearm, squeezing his fingers lightly. “You don’t need to convince me. It’s like you said: we don’t know Loki, you do, even when he is… whatever he is right now. What do you need me to do?”

Thor’s forehead creased into a frown and he shook his head dejectedly. “I do not know,” he said honestly. “I feel I am at a disadvantage in this world. I do not know enough of Midgardian customs to deduce my next move.” It was an unreal sight, the tall Asgardian, who was bigger than Steve, hunching in on himself as he tried to think of a way to end a war before it had well and truly begun.

Steve bit his lip and frowned when he remembered his earlier conversation with Dr. Banner and Stark.

“Well,” he drawled. “I might have an idea on where to begin.”

—————

Steve

He hadn’t been this angry, this fueled with unbridled rage since he had woken up, and he had almost forgotten how it made his skin crawl and his entire body itch for a fight.

Hydra weapons.

S.H.I.E.L.D. had been messing around with Hydra weapons and using the cube to make more.

The automatic rifle was heavy in his hand and his mind was spinning with the implications of what he had found, of what Tony Stark had implied, and he had no idea who to trust anymore. He tried not to think about whether Becca had known what S.H.I.E.L.D. had been doing, tried not to think about if she’d deliberately been keeping it from him, because he liked Becca, and he wanted to trust her more than anything—but he had only known her for a few weeks, hadn’t he?

For all he knew, everything she’d done for him, everything that had happened since she’d ‘taken’ him from S.H.I.E.L.D. custody, could have been planned to make sure he’d trust her.

They could have used Becky to make him trust them.

He couldn’t—couldn’t—consider the possibility she was in on it, too. Becky had been his and Bucky’s favorite girl when they’d been kids. She was their little sister, and Steve can’t imagine that that sweet girl—woman—would agree to do something like this to him.

He just couldn’t.

He rounded the corner, hardly waiting to see if Thor was still following him, and stomped into the lab without slowing down, not even a little bit fazed at finding Fury arguing with Stark and Banner.

“What is Phase Two?” Stark asked, head tilted to the side as he looked at Fury.

Steve dropped the assault rifle on the table with a loud clang, making sure every eye in the room was on him as he seethed, “Phase Two is S.H.I.E.L.D. uses the cube to make weapons and ignores Thor when he says there’s more going on here.”

The god trailed up behind him, silent support, but Steve didn’t have to look to know he’d be frowning at Fury. Thor had been mostly silent after they’d uncovered the crate of weapons, but Steve had made sure he understood the implications of what they’d found.

He couldn’t fucking believe this.

Stark’s eyes were wide as he glanced between Steve and Thor intermittently, and Steve narrowly suppressed the urge to roll his eyes at him.

He’d never been that fond of Howard, regardless of the other man’s clear fondness of him—and Bucky, despite his sneering at their lack of higher education—and he wasn’t sure why he’d expected he’d feel so different about his son. Clearly the younger Stark hadn’t bothered to actually listen to Peggy and Howard when they spoke about him, rather than Captain America.

“Sorry,” he offered insincerely. “Computer was moving a little slow for me.”

He drew his eyes from Tony slowly and turned his attention to Fury, who was already moving towards him with placating words that did nothing to soothe the burning embers of Steve’s rage. “Rogers, we gathered everything related to the Tesseract. This does not mean we’re—”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Nick,” Stark interrupted with a raised eyebrow as he swung the large computer screen around so they could see the blueprints it showed. “What were you lying?”

Steve scoffed at Fury and hooked his thumbs in the stupid belt on his stupid fucking suit. “I was wrong, Director. The world hasn’t changed a bit.” Before any of them could say more, Becca strode in, followed closely by Agent Romanoff, and Steve’s entire focus narrowed onto his roommate.

“Did you know about this?” he demanded angrily as he stepped towards her, gesturing towards the computer screen. “Were you keeping this from me?”

He felt momentarily guilty when Becca stumbled back a little, obviously taken aback by his hostile attitude. Her eyes—so much like Bucky’s, damn it—widened and she stared at the screen in confusion, eyes darting over the details lightning-quick, before turning back towards him with a determined expression. “No, of course not. What is this?”

“Rogers, Agent Barnes didn’t have the clearance—” Fury started, but Steve didn’t want to hear it, because nothing he’d been told seemed to be the truth, so why the hell would this be?

“Steve,” Becca tried, stepping towards him with her hands raised in a placating gesture and damn if it didn’t piss him off more.

“Don’t touch me,” he hissed, yanking his arm from her reach as he glared at her, ignoring the way she almost flinched back from him, no matter how it made him burn with guilt. “Is anything you told me true?” His mind was filled with memories of their conversations over the past three weeks, of the way he had confided in her, and he was horrified by the idea that Becca might have been following Fury’s orders all along.

“Hey, come on, Capsicle,” Stark jumped in, resting a hand on Becca’s shoulder to pull her back a little, almost as though Steve was the dangerous one.

He stepped forward again, angry words on the tip of his tongue when Agent Romanoff cut in, eyes on Dr. Banner, who stood tense and angry at the far end of the lab. “You wanna think about removing yourself from his environment, doctor?”

“I was in Calcutta,” Dr. Banner replied scathingly. “I was pretty well removed.”

Steve lost interest in their end of the conversation pretty swiftly, eyes drawn to where Becca stood with Tony, the billionaire’s hand still on her shoulder as they both stared at Banner and Agent Romanoff.

Steve wasn’t an idiot, contrary to popular belief, and while he may not always have been the brains behind the operations with the Howlies, he was no slacker, and he had not been blind to the way Stark had glared at him when Steve had turned to Becca earlier, when he had put his hand on her arm to check on her. Though Steve was still mystified by their interaction, he gathered it meant the billionaire cared about Becca, at least.

He wasn’t sure why that idea bothered him so much, now.

“The world’s filling up with people who can’t be matched,” Fury exclaimed exasperatedly, as though that was supposed to make his experimenting alright. “People that can’t be controlled.”

“Like you controlled the cube?” Steve hissed scathingly, ignoring the way the anger burning through his veins felt off, because he was just so done with the way S.H.I.E.L.D. was handling this whole damned thing, and he just wanted to be back at Becca’s old little apartment with the sagging couch and the computer she’d hooked up to the television so Steve could google Youtube videos easily.

He just didn’t want to be here.

“Nuclear deterrent,” Tony deadpanned, and much as Steve was inclined to hate the man based simply on his wealth, he agreed with him there—even if he still wasn’t entirely clear on what nuclear weapons were. “Cause that always calms everything right down.”

“Remind me again how you made your fortune, Stark?” Fury sniped, raising a single eyebrow at Tony.

Steve couldn’t help but sneer, despite his unvoiced agreement with the man from the moment before, “I’m sure if he still made weapons, Stark would be neck deep—”

“Wait, wait, hold up,” the older man started forward, waving his hands in an approximation of confusion that pissed Steve off more than anything else Stark had done so far. “How is this now about me?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Steve mocked, turning towards the dark-haired man again. “Isn’t everything?”

Something close to satisfaction warmed him when Stark reeled back as though Steve had slapped him, but his mind felt clouded and he couldn’t quite remember why he wanted to piss Stark off so badly. He was just so fucking frustrated.

“Steve!”

He snapped his head to the side when Becca slapped his arm, something ugly in the back of his mind sneering at her confused expression. “Come on, that’s not fair.”

“Like you’ve been fair to me?” The words fell from his lips without his express permission and, in the back of his mind, he cringed at the hurt expression on her face—but he didn’t stop. “How do I know you’ve not been lying to me?”

Stark scoffed at him and wrapped his fingers around Becca’s wrist to pull her back towards him. “Ignore Golden Boy, Becca,” he sneered. “Clearly he needs to get laid more. Too uptight.”

“Tony!” Both Becca and Dr. Banner turned to glare at Stark, but Steve didn’t care, because that rich son-of-a-bitch just kept pushing every single button he had. “I swear to God, Stark,” he hissed, “one more stupid crack—”

“Threatening!” Stark shouted dramatically. “I feel threatened!”

The situation only devolved further, and Steve wasn’t even sure who he was arguing with anymore, only that every single person in the room was pissing him off so much that he had to restrain himself from punching all of them through the goddamned wall.

Agent Romanoff’s clear, seemingly unaffected voice pierced through the haze of anger that clouded his mind, and he turned towards her subconsciously, even as she addressed Dr. Banner.

“You need to step away,” she enunciated slowly, eyeing Dr. Banner meaningfully, and though he was still angry, he couldn’t disagree with her logic. The last thing they needed was the fucking Hulk tearing through the air… ship… whatever.

“Why shouldn’t the guy blow off a little steam?” Steve’s blood nearly boiled when Stark tossed an arm around him in a gesture that was too reminiscent of the way Bucky used to before he’d drag Steve in for a playful kiss, before—

“You know damn well why,” Steve snapped, shoving Stark back a little harder than he intended to, but damn it he didn’t want anyone else to fucking put their hands on him like that. “Back off!”

The rest of the room faded a little bit when Stark swaggered back towards him, stepping right up into Steve’s personal space—and Steve was completely taken aback to realise that Stark was not… unfortunate looking. “Oh, I’m starting to want you to make me,” Stark shot back challengingly.

Steve’s heart pounded, and he couldn’t suppress the thoughts of his fights with Bucky, of the way his best guy had been able to make him burn with anger as well as desire, and of the way this—this—felt frighteningly familiar.

It pissed him off beyond anything he could even comprehend.

“Big man in a suit of armor,” he hissed, frightened by how much Stark was able to rile him up. “What are you when you take that off?”

Stark scoffed, but his reply came so swiftly Steve almost believed him capable of reading Steve’s mind and fucking preparing for his question before he’d even spoken it aloud. “Genius, philanthropist, reformed playboy, billionaire,” the other man finished smugly, and it pissed him off.

What—did Stark honestly believe that having money made him better than everyone else?

“I know guys with none of that worth ten of you,” he spit, the faces of the Howlies stuck in the forefront of his mind, the way they’d all had a little too much experience with being barely able to scrape up enough money to get by, to feed themselves and their families.

Howard had been just like this.

More money than God and tossing it around like it meant nothing.

Like the five dollars Bucky had worked himself to the bone for, to pay for Steve’s medicine, were worthless. Like it meant nothing, when it meant everything.

Of course his kid would end up the same.

“Steve, come on, that’s not fair,” Becca piped up, pushing past Stark and pressing her hand against his chest almost like she was trying to hold him back from—from what? Telling Stark the fucking truth for once in his stupid, spoiled existence? “You don’t know Tony, he’s—”

“Please.” He shoved her aside—slightly more gently than he would with anyone else, he wasn’t that much of an asshole—and glared at Stark. “I’ve seen the footage, I read the file. The only thing you fight for is yourself. You’re not the guy to make the sacrifice play—to lay down on the wire and let the other guy crawl over you.”

He’d seen situations like that all too often in the war, had seen friends shove others out of the way and save their lives at the cost of their own—he’d lost Bucky because the other man had taken up the shield to defend Steve when he was down…

Every single one of those men and women, who risked their lives, who gave their lives to save others…

They were the heroes to Steve.

Not the fucking billionaire in an iron suit.

Stark, however, didn’t seem too             perturbed and shrugged. “I think I’d just cut the wire.”

He had, as Steve expected, entirely missed Steve’s point. “Always a way out, isn’t there?” Steve smiled wryly, shaking his head. He didn’t really know why he’d hoped Tony would prove to be smarter than his father had been in that department. “You know, you may not be a threat, but you better stop pretending to be a hero.”

He almost expected Becca to butt in again, but when he looked to the side, she’d been caught up in a fierce argument with Agent Romanoff, and before he could determine what they were talking about, Tony pushed forward into his space and poked at his chest angrily.

“A hero? Like you?” Stark scoffed and rolled his eyes. “You’re a fucking lab rat, Rogers. Everything special about you came from a bottle.”

Steve reeled back, struck by Stark’s words more than he wanted to admit—it hit right on the old insecurities he’d been wrestling with his entire life that doubled after the serum and, somehow, people liked him; Steve never stopped wondering how many of the people he met, how many of the friends he’d made would’ve been his friends if they’d met him when he was still scrawny and sickly—but Stark just pushed on, a glint in his eye telling Steve the other man knew exactly how much those words hit home for Steve.

“Too bad the bottle came from a Stark, too, isn’t it?” Steve’s mouth opened, but no words fell from his lips, and Stark just smirked at him. “Can’t even pick your own girl.” Steve’s eyes went wide as Tony gestured towards Becca with a careless gesture. “Had to run with my sloppy seconds there, too.”

Steve wasn’t sure if it was the implication that he was sleeping with Becca—something the entirety of S.H.I.E.L.D. seemed to have convinced themselves of—or the callous way Stark spoke of her, but his hands had curled into fists and he’d taken a step towards the shorter man before he could stop himself, halted only when Thor reached out and curled his hand around Steve’s bicep.

Too late, Steve realized the others had fallen silent, too, and he turned to find Becca staring at Tony with wide, horrified eyes. “Tony,” she breathed, hurt and anger both evident in her tone, and Steve was baffled to see Stark look as though he, too, had been surprised and a little appalled by his own words—but he didn’t move to take them back.

“Put on the suit,” Steve hissed, the look of utter hurt and betrayal on Becca’s face making him ache somewhere deep inside his chest as the argument around them slowly resumed, the fiery anger he’d been feeling since he’d found the weapons rearing back up. “Let’s go a few rounds.”

He glared at Stark, puffing up his chest a little, because he would not fucking let this jumped up asshole win, damn it. He didn’t take his eyes off of Tony’s—and a distant part of his mind noted that he’d never seen that shade of brown before, with just that hint of orange shining through—until Thor piped up behind them again and Stark looked away, rubbing at his eyes blearily.

Steve lost the thread of the conversation again when Becca tried to push past him, towards Tony. Before he could stop himself, he curled his fingers around her wrist to hold her back, because he’d seen, he’d seen how much Tony’s words had hurt her and, even though he was still pissed off to high fucking hell, he was reluctant to let her near the other man again.

“You can’t, I tried!”

The words pierced through their argumentative haze, and Steve’s head swiveled around to Banner, who stood by the scepter, sheepishness and anger warring for dominance in his expression. “I got low,” he continued when everyone stopped to stare at him. “I didn’t see an end, so I put a bullet in my mouth and the other guy spit it out!”

Steve winced and tightened his grip on Becca’s wrist, because his anger was rapidly ebbing away and he remembered enough of Becca’s vague tales of her first few months after she’d been discharged from the Army to know she’d been that low, too, and that she’d tried that once.

He very definitively did not think of how low he had found himself after Bucky had died.

He hadn’t been suicidal, per se, but when the opportunity had come, he hadn’t fought to get away from it—crashing the Valkyrie had been a way out, too.

He understood.

Dr. Banner swallowed thickly before he continued, and Steve tensed a little when the other man’s hand crept towards the scepter, almost like Banner himself didn’t even realise what he was doing. “So I moved on. I focused on helping other people. I was good, until you dragged me back into this freak show and put everyone here at risk! You wanna know my secret, Agent Romanoff? You wanna know how I stay calm?”

Before Banner could step forward and do something he’d likely regret, Steve stepped forward, well aware that every single agent in the room had their hands on their guns. “Dr. Banner,” he began gently, raising a hand in what he hoped would be perceived as a peaceful gesture. “Put down the scepter.”

Before Banner could say anything or anyone could move, the computer beeped loudly, and both Stark and Banner immediately swerved towards it, eyes wide and intrigued. “Sorry, kids,” Banner said gruffly, setting down the scepter. “Guess you don’t get to see my little party trick after all.”

“Have you located the Tesseract?”

Fury sounded both exasperated and eager, and Steve finally released his grip on Becca’s wrist so they could move closer to look at the map splayed out across the monitor.

“I can get there faster,” Stark exclaimed after spending all of four seconds looking at the screen, spinning on his heel towards the door before Becca caught his arm.

“Tony, that’s really not—”

“Look, Stark,” Fury cut in almost simultaneously. “All of us—”

Stark just disregarded all of them and flounced towards the door, and Steve had been right, damn it, Stark was not a team player and he was only doing this to get the credit in the end. He grabbed at Stark’s arm, dragging the shorter man back with ease. “You’re not going alone, Stark.”

“You gonna stop me, Capsicle?”

Steve sneered at the man and pushed forward into Stark’s personal space again. “Put on the suit. We’ll find out,” he taunted.

“I’m not afraid to hit an old man,” Stark answered derisively, poking against Steve’s chest aggressively.

“Put. On. The. Suit.”

Before anyone could do anything else, there was an enormous explosion, rocking the Helicarrier sideways violently. Steve felt the heat of the fire burn on his skin, and windows shattered as smoke and fire blew out through the openings. Thousands of pieces of glass and steel rained down on them and alarms—shrill and deafening to Steve’s sensitive ears—erupted into shrill squeals, as though they wouldn’t be able to tell something bad had happened by the way the Helicarrier tilted alarmingly to the right now.

Steve struggled to his feet, doing his best to ignore the blaring alarms, and helped Becca up, concern aching in his chest when she looked at him, expression dazed and bleeding from a cut on her head.

There was a gaping crater in the middle of the floor, and neither Agent Romanoff nor Dr. Banner were anywhere in sight, though Stark was already stumbling back to his feet next to Steve, reaching for Becca in concern, too, as soon as he got his feet under him.

The others remained on the floor for a heartbeat longer, curled in a fetal position to protect their ears and vital organs as they tried to regain their bearings.

“Becca,” Steve wheezed, returning his attention to his roommate, ignoring Tony’s shaking hands pushing her hair from her forehead to look at where she was bleeding, shaking her shoulder a little to get her to focus her misty gaze on him. “Becca, are you okay?”

“Dizzy,” she replied fuzzily, but before either Steve or Stark could say anything, Fury pushed between him and Stark and shoved them from Becca’s side.

“Go. I’ve got her, Captain. Go help the others.”

He blinked at Fury slowly for a long few moments before he nodded, clumsily patting at Tony’s shoulder until he could draw the other man towards the door. “Put on the suit,” he ordered blearily, stumbling into Stark a few times as they tried to leave the room without falling over.

[cddump]

Again (Sitting Three, 2426 words)

The movers were at least kind enough to place Casper's heavier furniture in the proper places they had discussed beforehand. It had cost a bit extra but he wouldn't have been able to set everything up by himself and having the movers wait for him to help wasn't an option. Casper stood from the doorway and flicked the light switch. The darkness that had encased his living room lifted in an instant, and the brightness revealed his couch and television sitting proudly in their places. A few cardboard boxes sat on the corner, but he ignored them for now and headed into the room to the right. The two-bedroom apartment was chosen specify so Casper could convert one of the rooms into a work office, and as he entered that room his desk was already set up against the wall. All that was missing was the monitor and computer. On the opposing wall from the computer desk was a slanted wooden drawing desk. It's shape and size were perfect for its purpose and he was happy to see it in one piece. More cardboard boxes lined the wall and Casper greedily opened them with the box cutter he had stashed in his bag before the trip started. He peered inside and was satisfied with the condition of his computer, monitor, and drawing tablet. If those key items survived the trip, then there was no doubt his printer and scanner had fared just as well. Instead of opening the rest of the boxes, 

Casper investigated the rest of the apartment for himself and returned to the living room. This was his home now, but it all felt so alien. The silent stillness of it all was off-putting, and despite having most of his furniture already set up, it still looked eerily empty. It was also obvious the place had just been cleaned, as the sterile odor of cleaning agents was all he could smell. It made him dizzy, like the smell within an overbearing and enclosed new car. Casper opened the window that was on the same wall as the TV to let in some of the night's cold air. As soon as he slid the window upwards, a stiff gust hit his face, and he couldn't help but enjoy the brisk breeze. Casper turned around. The small and narrow kitchen was behind a chest high wall. He would be able to watch television while using the stove, and it reminded him of a bar. Albeit a small and cheap one, with a pantry hidden away in the corner for storage. Opposite of his work office was his own bedroom. The office had a bathroom next to its doorway, but this apartment was seemingly designed with a 'master bedroom' in mind and had a small bathroom attached to it deeper in. Inside the bedroom, his bed had been placed against the wall, with a much smaller television placed opposite of it on top of his dresser. “So much for a grand tour,” he mumbled. Still, he couldn't help but smile to himself. The apartment was small, but it was all he needed. For now, he needed to start unpacking. A sudden ring filled the apartment as Casper wiped sweat from his forehead. He had lost track of how long he had been unpacking for, but was surprised with how much he had managed to get done. His ringing phone sat on the coffee table, which he quickly answered happily after seeing the name displayed. “Hello.” Despite how happy he was to see his sister calling him, his tired nature took priority and Casper couldn't work up any enthusiasm for the greeting. “Hey, Casper!” Crystal's voice responded through the line, “how's the move coming?” Casper yawned loudly and with purpose. “That bad, huh?” “It's not terrible, actually. But I can tell it's going to take me a while to get used to this.” “Mmm. That's how it was for me and Zoey too. Think you'll get any sleep tonight?”      “I'll try but it doesn't look likely,” he answered as he rubbed his eyes. “It's a new place entirely. My body needs time to get used it too.” “Well I hope you do. You still have those piano CDs, right?” “Yeah. I'll play them if I can't get any sleep. Hopefully that'll work.” “Is that Casp?” A third voice asked through the line. “Ah, yeah it is,” Crystal said, away from the phone. “Lemme talk to him, lemme talk to him! Hi Casper!” The high pitched voice grew louder with the last two words as Zoey spoke directly into the phone. Casper could mentally see Crystal trying to wrestle the phone back away from her roommate. “Hey Zoey, what's up?” “Forget me, what's up with you? How's the place?” “Quiet, actually.” Zoey made a grunt, one Casper recognized. “Did my sister tackle you to the ground?” “She's mean!” “Give me my phone!” Crystal's voice was in the background and Casper smiled to himself. “Uh-oh. Gotta go, Casp! Byeeeeee!” “Hello?” Crystal said, her voice directly in line with the phone. “Hi, yeah.” “Sorry about that. Anyway, I'm sure you'll get used to the place soon. We gotta visit you at some point too!” “I'd like that.” “Have you made any friends yet? I know it's been less than a day, but still.” “...Well. I wouldn't really call him a 'friend,' but I ran into my neighbor." “Oh yeah? Friendly guy?” “I guess. I think he's a little crazy, but harmless. I hope.” “What do you mean?” “He thinks aliens are after him. That's why he lives on the ground floor.” “...What?” “Or, wait no, he's looking for molemen? And is digging a tunnel to find them? I'm not sure, he was hard to follow.” “Sounds creepy. Have fun with that one.” “I'm sure I will.” ��Alright. I was just calling to check in on you, so I'm gonna let you go.” “For sure.” “Call if you need anything, alright?” “Mm-hmm.” “Goodnight, bro.” “I sure hope it will be. Goodnight. Tell Zoey bye for me too.” “Right. Later.” The phone went quiet after that, and Casper stood up to stretch. He had been unpacking for long enough, and he decided to try and get some sleep. After a quick swap of clothing, Casper pulled the covers off his bed and slid in before closing his eyes. He emptied his mind, and waited. The tiredness he felt from traveling weighed down on him like a ton of bricks. His feet were sore from being cramped behind crowded train seats and cold walks through the night. His arms felt as if they were being pulled down by jugs of water, and his head pounded from lack of sleep. Yet, hours passed and nothing happened. He lay there with his eyes closed, waiting for rest that simply would not come. And he knew it wouldn't. He sat up and reached for the music player he had unpacked. His heavy finger pressed down on the play button and smoothing piano and violin notes filled the room. Again, Casper tried. He flipped the pillow over and placed his head on the cool sheet, letting the waves of music wash over him. Another hour passed with no rest to be found. The music had reached its end twenty minutes ago and began to repeat itself, but Casper knew there was nothing he could do. Instead, he stood in irritation and put a jacket on over his sleeping shirt. Sweatpants and slippers would do for what he had planned. He made his way to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water from the faucet before downing it quickly. Casper grabbed his phone and key before heading out into the building's hallway. Usually Casper would take walks around the block in this situation. It rarely helped, but was better than suffering in bed. However, his feet hurt too much for that and he didn't know this area well enough anyway, so instead he opted to head to the roof of the apartment complex for a change of scenery. Casper walked down the hallway and was thankful to find an elevator. The idea of walking up stairs pained him and he was happy to take the easy way out. He pressed the button against the wall and was surprised when the doors opened instantly. The elevator was completely empty as Casper entered it, and as it ascended he checked his phone. Three in the morning. Crystal had called him at eleven, which meant he spent four hours trying to sleep. He sighed as the elevator halted, and the doors quickly opened for him. The night sky was still dark, though from here the stars were harder to spot thanks to the city lights. The roof's ledges were walled away by a tall chain link fence, and as stepped into the darkness, another gust of wind struck him. “Hey, dude,” came a call. Casper raised an eyebrow. There were lamp posts scattered across the rooftop, and a man walked under the light of one. “Oh, it's you.” “What's with that greeting, man?!” Alex cried. “You should be happier to see me.” “Sorry. I'm tired.” Casper walked towards Alex, who sat on a foldable chair before pointing to a stack of them. “Can't sleep, huh? Pull up a chair, my man.” “Thanks. And no I can't. Not a wink.” Casper placed his own chair next to Alex's. They were facing the fenced ledge over-viewing the city. The streets were empty, and Casper could see some poor bastard at a red light. There was no other cars or traffic, yet the light refused to turn green for him. “Weird.” “...What?” “I said that's weird. This place is super quiet since we're away from the main road. People never have trouble sleeping here.” “Mmm.” “You one of them insomniacs, bro?” Casper sighed heavy as he rubbed his eyes. “Yeah.” “Oh, you are? I was bluffing. Thought you were like me.” “Like you?” “I take twenty minute naps every two hours. It's the most efficient sleep schedule for humans. Plus it keeps you away from the government's designated sleeping hours so they can't brainwash you.” Casper couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity of it all. “I'm serious man. I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to brainwash you but failed. That's probably why you have insomnia, you know. Government diddlyed you over.” “Whatever. Do me a favor and don't tell anyone, alright?” “Word. ...wait, why?” Before Casper could answer, the elevator opened once again. “Oh, she's here. I told you I was meeting with someone, didn't I? Don't worry, you can stick around. You're cool enough to pick this up. Cuz you're smart. Like me.” A woman stepped out of the elevator and made her way to the two men. From the limited light available, Casper could see the woman's brown hair was long and straight, though a newsboy cap sat on her head. Her amber eyes pierced through the night as she stared at Alex. “Hello there, miss Chase. How are we this fine evening?” “Damn it, Alex. I should have known better than to take another job from you,” the woman answered as she pulled out a lighter and a pack of cigarettes from her pocket. She gazed sideways at Casper. “Nice bedhead. Mom couldn't comb your hair?” She said. “Nice hat,” he snapped back in tired irritation, “sold enough newspapers for that bike yet?” Chase smiled back earnestly. “Whoa hey, calm down you two,” Alex told them, “Dude, she isn't like us. She needs sleep to function. She gets cranky if she's up this late. And Chase, take it easy, my bro's got amnesia.” “Insomnia,” Casper corrected him. “And I told you not to tell people that.” “But why not? No shame, my man!” “I just don't want to be known as 'that dude with insomnia, alright?” “Hey!” Chase clapped her hands twice loudly before placing the cigarette in her mouth. “I got a job to do. Alex, what the diddly, man? I thought we agreed no more goose chases?” “So it was a dead end too, huh?” Alex asked as Chase lit her cigarette. The burning tip glowed in the night's darkness. “No shit. Hey, 'bro,' you smoke?” Chase tilted her pack towards Casper, but he held his hand in protest. “Nah. I appreciate it though. And I go by Casper. Casper Donn.” “I'm Chase Conner. Here, my card.” Chase reached into her back pocket and handed him a slim white card. It read 'Chase Conner, Private Investigator,' and listed her work address and phone number. “You're a PI?” “That a problem?” “No. Actually I think it's kinda cool.” “It really isn't as glamorous as you think it is. More often than not I just check on cheating spouses or try to find someone's lost cat. Don't even get me started on the jobs this idiot's set up for me.” “I would     love     to hear about the jobs this this idiot's set up for you.” “Hey man, that's not cool,” Alex interrupted. “What about client confidentiality, huh?” “Meh,” Chase shrugged, “just as a taste, this last job involved me chasing a squirrel with a tracking chip Alex placed on it.” “...A squirrel?” “He thinks aliens domesticated all of Earth's and are using them to steal people's prescription meds. Then the squirrels take the medication to their mothership. By the way, Alex. The squirrel you tagged? I found it dead in a river.” “Damn it!” Alex hissed, “they were two steps ahead of us!” “If you know this guy's a nut, why take jobs from him?” “The first gig he set up was an accidental victory,” Chase responded. “He thought there was an underground mutant flea market or something below the sewers on the outskirts of town. I thought he was full of shit but when I went down there I found a huge drug operation. I reported that to the police and was given a nice reward. From then on I figured he might be lucky and might keep accidentally finding good scoops for me.” “How's that worked out for you?” “It hasn't. Speaking of which. Alex?” “Yeah?” “I'm blacklisting you. Don't bother calling for a job, cuz I'm not taking anymore from you.” “Shiiit, really?” “Yeah, really. Good to meet you, Casper. Give me a call if you need my services.” Casper nodded, and Chase walked towards the staircases, opting to walk down with her cigarette. “Damn it,” Alex cursed, “the squirrels must have gotten to her.”

[hragon]

Hello there! I've seen you just got and iPad Pro and I think you mention somewhere that you have a cintiq too, I would eventually like to get both but was wondering which you would recommend getting first, or some pro and cons of them both! I already have a Wacom tablet, but was thinking of upgrading! Thank you for your time! (Ps I absolutely adore ur art it's beautiful pls keep up the wonderful work)

I think it really depends on what you’d like to use it for! I can’t speak too much on the hardware specs of both. I got the iPad mainly for the purpose of having a tablet I can take with me and still have my Cintiq be my primary tablet, so I did some research and went into the store to play with one of the models and make sure it was something I was interested in working with - I haven’t actually done a lot of research comparing it to a Cintiq.

I can’t think of any huge pros and cons so far. A Cintiq will have access to the full blown Photoshop and other drawing programs, but Adobe Sketch and Procreate are both great options so far on the iPad and I’m a lot more impressed with it than I expected to be. The biggest plus on the iPad I can think of is the mobility, so if it’s something you want to take with you that might be a factor to consider.

If you plan to spend most of your time drawing at your desk anyway, you might want to go with Cintiq. I have a Cintiq 12WX and I think it’ll remain my primary tablet for the fully equipped Photoshop, direct connection to my computer (although apparently there’s a third-party app for iPad Pro that may allow this - I haven’t tried it yet and I’m not sure whether it only connects to Apple products or if it will connect to a Windows machine, like I have), and larger screen size. I got the smaller iPad model because it’s easier to carry around and have in my lap, and for an on-the-go tablet I find the size suits my purposes just fine. I also prefer the texture on the Cintiq screen where on the iPad you can feel how you’re more drawing on glass, but this is a minor personal preference and I’ve been having too much fun with the iPad to really notice.

I also think the Cintiq might be better, at least for me, for drawing for an extended period of time. Both the iPad and the Apple Pencil need to be recharged. This isn’t a huge deal - the iPad can last for a few hours on a full charge and you can always just plug it in if it gets low. The Apple Pencil takes the same charger or can be plugged in directly to your iPad (using the same port on the iPad as the charger, though). Being able to plug in the Apple Pencil to the iPad is handy if it the iPad is charged, and the pencil charges quickly so even a few minutes will buy you more time, but unless you have two chargers you can only charge one at a time. I don’t find this to be a huge inconvenience, but if you’re drawing for hours and having to recharge regularly I can see how this could get slightly annoying.

The main reason I say the Cintiq might be better if you draw for long periods at a time, is that the iPad Pro can get pretty hot after a while. I was sketching last night and had to put it down for a while at one point because it was uncomfortable for my hand, but my Cintiq is always cool as a cucumber (note that my model is a monitor, as I’ve hears complaints that the Cintiq computers can also get hot as well after using them for a while).

Sorry I’m not more helpful, but those are my impressions! I would definitely recommend watching some reviews for both, and going into a store that sells Apple products to check out the iPad to see what you think first. I doubt the iPad is going to replace my Cintiq but I do think that either is a good option.

(p.s. Thank you! :D)