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sineala · 6 years

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I'm a different anon but I want those paragraphs of why you don't ship Steve/Bucky. I got into Stony by way of MCU!Stucky, so something I struggle with Stony fics (of any fandom) is feeling the Stony chemistry when Bucky is present as a character. With my very selective gay-ified memory of a very small slice of Marvel canon, I just feel like Steve probably wouldn't go for Tony if Bucky is an option? But I recognize I have very little evidence for this opinion other than shared 1940s life exp.

Okay. For the five of you who, I guess, sincerely want to know why I don't ship 616 Steve/Bucky. Here goes.

I get why people ship MCU Steve/Bucky. They had a lot of comics material to draw on when deciding how to present Captain America in the MCU, and they intentionally chose and shaped a story that would make Bucky incredibly important to Steve; the combination of factors they arranged is such that no one else in the MCU is going to be able to be what Bucky is to Steve, although certainly other characters can be meaningful to Steve in different ways.

The MCU started off by borrowing from Ults, as they did for much of the MCU, and making Bucky Steve's childhood best friend as well as WWII teammate. They structured the plots of the Cap movies so as to make Bucky very important to Steve in all of them. In CATFA, rescuing Bucky was Steve's motivation to finally become Captain America, in the sense of actually going off and using his newfound abilities to fight evil. And then Bucky dies, which they arrange so that we can actually see Steve grieving for him (rather than a scenario closer to 616 in which they both go down at the same time). They also had the advantage of knowing that they next wanted to adapt The Winter Soldier arc, a storyline in which Bucky comes back -- so, since they knew that, they were able to take the "man out of time" quality of Steve and refine it and aim it, narratively, so that Steve is adrift in this strange future, and even though he connects with Sam and Natasha in CATWS (as well as the other Avengers in the team movies) they really set it up so that for him Bucky is the person who represents his past, who knows the "real" Steve who isn't Captain America, who has all this shared life experience that no one else can match. After Peggy dies in CACW, there is no one but Bucky who knows Steve from before the ice.

Recently I saw while checking fannish news sites that Chris Evans described Bucky as Steve's home. And, man, if that's what they're going for, I can see it. I mean, they've done three movies where one of the major things that drives the plot, in each of these movies, is the fact that Steve has some intense feelings for Bucky -- the rescue in CATFA, the, uh, entire plot of CATWS, and Steve trying to find Bucky and keep him safe in CACW. Bucky clearly means a hell of a lot to him, and Steve's plots have centered on having Bucky as his friend and ally. Why shouldn't you ship Steve with this guy who is his home? I get the impulse.

And I feel like I should start out by saying all this because I see all these things that people like about MCU Steve/Bucky. This is my understanding of what people like about MCU Steve/Bucky. What MCU Steve and Bucky have are all extremely romantic things for your OTP to have; if this is what you see in them, I see why you ship it in the MCU. But I don't think any of what people like about MCU Steve/Bucky is there for them in 616. At all.

I'm not saying this because I don't like 616 Bucky, because I do. I like him a lot! He's great! But... I don't ship him with 616 Steve. I don't really see it, not when there are other choices I see a lot better. (Like Tony.)

Where I am coming from in terms of my familiarity with comics: I've read some but not all of Golden Age Cap and none of the fifties Commie Smasher stuff. I've read a fair amount of Silver Age and Modern Cap comics, including the 1970s Invaders run, which is my primary point of reference for pre-retcon WWII Steve & Bucky. After v1, I've read Waid's v1/v3, most of the parts of Brubaker's run that Steve was alive for (including WWII-set work like The Marvels Project), and, God help me, most of Remender and all of everything after. So I acknowledge that I haven't read everything with Steve & Bucky and it's possible that there's something with 616 Steve/Bucky content that I haven't read that would really sway me, but if there is, I haven't heard about it.

Right. So, first off, one of the big differences is that Steve and Bucky aren't childhood friends, did not grow up together, and in fact did not meet until Steve was already Captain America. Steve's best friend as a child, in a retcon from the early 80s, was a kid named Arnie Roth. Not Bucky. So right there, if one of the things you like about Steve/Bucky in the MCU is the intimacy of the fact that Bucky knows who Steve was before the serum -- well, he doesn't in the comics. They don't have that.

I don't know if Bucky's age in WWII was ever explicitly given, pre-retcon -- Brubaker has put his age at sixteen -- but he was very definitely depicted as a kid sidekick, pubescent if not pre-pubescent (to me, he looks like he's about twelve), in the vein of Golden Age kid sidekicks everywhere, until Brubaker's run in 2005. MCU was working with the age retcons already in (actually, more like the ages from Ults), so if you're a MCU fan, Steve and Bucky have always been close to the same age, and their relationship has been one of equal or near-equal teammates and close friends. The retcons have pushed 616 Steve/Bucky closer to the same age -- when they met, now Steve would have been 20 and Bucky 16 -- but this really hasn't been the case for the majority of the years Marvel Comics has been going. Bucky has spent the majority of his fictional 616 life being Steve's (dead) kid sidekick, and if you're going to slash them in 616 you have to either accept that this does not bother you and you're going to use evidence of their friendship from that kid-sidekick time period to lend credence to your shipping, or you're going to restrict yourself to only material published after 2005, of which there... isn't much. (More on this later.)

This is personal preference on my part, I am aware, but the mentor/kid sidekick dynamic is not one that does a lot for me in terms of a romantic pairing; I think I'd have a hard time seeing pre-retcon 616 Steve/Bucky in a way that wouldn't paint it as, uh, kind of a fucked-up thing for Captain America to do with his kid sidekick, on account of the age/experience gap. It is a squick for me. And, yeah, I know that Bucky's not a kid now, and that the retcon evens out the age gap, but I think the fact that there's so much canon (even recent canon ignoring the retcon!) in which Bucky is a kid makes it hard for me to... just ignore it. That's a me problem. I know. And even when he's not an actual kid he's still a sidekick, which is that same dynamic, just less extreme. It's just hard for me to get over that in 616; in MCU, the Steve/Bucky fans have never had to get over that.

And, okay, yes, Steve does have some intense feelings about Bucky in 616 -- but they're essentially a one-sided relationship, because Steve's intense feelings are basically "being sad that Bucky is dead." He feels personally responsible for Bucky's death; MCU Steve mourns Bucky, certainly, as a lost friend, but 616 Steve's power differential over Bucky is a lot greater. He was a kid, Steve was supposed to protect him, and he let him down. It's different. Anyway, we see a lot more dead Bucky than we do live Bucky. One of Steve's major characterization points, especially in early Silver Age canon, is that he regrets that he couldn't save Bucky. Bucky is basically a narrative trope, a source of pain for Steve, not a living character with motivations and agency and so on and so forth who Steve is regularly interacting with. Prior to Brubaker, Bucky was dead. Dead dead dead. Not coming back, never going to come back. So the comics weren't really structured like the MCU films are, where this hanging thread of Bucky's death in CATFA is neatly resolved by his return to life in the next movie -- in the comics, he died, he was dead, and he was gonna stay dead forever. MCU viewers didn't have to wait nearly forty years, real-time, to see Bucky come back after his death was retconned into Avengers #4. Comics readers did. This has some pacing consequences for the comics.

So, yeah, sure, 616 Steve grieved Bucky's death. He made Rick Jones dress up as Bucky and be his new teen sidekick (side note: what the fuck, Steve?). There are a bunch of plots where he thinks Bucky is alive again but it isn't really Bucky and he's sad all over again. Or plots where he's a man out of time and he misses the past and misses Bucky. I'm not saying those don't exist, or that they're not evidence that Steve cares, because Steve certainly cares. But the thing about the pacing of all this is that eventually they stop doing those plots. Over time he connects with new people, modern people, civilians and superheroes, his fellow Avengers and his new sidekicks. Eventually Steve settles in and lives in the present and his life is no longer about missing the past and he's finally accepted who he is and when he is. (I feel like this is something MCU Steve hasn't really had the chance to do.) And it's long after he's accepted this that Bucky finally comes back into his life. If they’d brought Bucky back to life in, say, 1965, it might have been different, but as it is Steve definitely has a place in the modern world by the time he meets Bucky again, and he doesn't have to cling to Bucky as the sole focus of the past he desperately wants to return to -- because that's not who he is anymore. So if one of the things you like about MCU Steve/Bucky is Bucky being particularly special to Steve in this way, as a continued focus of intense feeling, you're not going to find the exact same thing in 616. There's grief, but then there's acceptance, and then there's... a whole lot of time Steve doesn't spend thinking about Bucky. There is a lot of Cap canon and it's not all about Bucky. Or even mostly about Bucky.

Building on that, the idea of Bucky as the best possible romantic partner for Steve specifically in terms of shared life experience is one of the big draws of MCU Steve/Bucky, as I understand it -- the idea that no one else has this shared life experience. And this is also another one of the things that is absolutely not true of 616. When Steve came back to life in 616, it was 1964. World War II had ended less than twenty years ago. If Steve hadn't gone into the ice he would have been in his early 40s. There were a whole lot of people walking around with shared life experience, and the comics knew that and used it. Pretty much everyone he served with other than Bucky was still alive! His childhood friend Arnie was still alive in the 1980s! Over the years, Steve builds various friendships with a bunch of people he served with or otherwise knew in the war: Fury, Fury's Howling Commandos, Logan, Natasha, Namor, the rest of the Invaders! Granted, some of this has gotten more and more improbable as we get farther out from World War II time-wise but that doesn't make it canonically untrue. Bucky definitely isn't the only person hanging around Earth-616 who has served in World War II. If that's Steve's criterion, he has options, is what I'm saying. There are other people out there who understand where he's coming from. He's not alone if he doesn't have Bucky.

While I'm at it, the commonality of Steve and Bucky being super-soldiers together also isn't a thing that exists in 616 in exactly the same way. Bucky was never experimented on in captivity; he did get the metal arm and was naturally an excellent sniper. In Fear Itself he is, IIRC, boosted to peak-human when Fury saves him with the Infinity Formula, but this isn't a thing that makes him and Steve unique, because there are plenty of super-powered people running around Earth-616. I mean, if you're going to say that Steve should date someone who's a super-soldier because only a fellow super-soldier can understand that aspect of Steve, then that's a lot of people in 616, up to and including Tony at certain points in his life. (Because, yes, Extremis was a super-soldier program.)

There's also the fact that, well, if you want to ship Steve and Bucky in 616, they don't exactly have a lot of canon together. If you ship 616 Steve/Tony, they have a lot of canon. The Cap-IM Slashy Moments List has about 200 moments, and those are just the bits people think are the absolute slashiest -- Steve and Tony have been in, at this point, close to two thousand comics together. This is not the case for Steve and Bucky. If you're willing to consider pre-retcon Steve/Bucky, you have the Golden Age Cap comics, and you have the 70s Invaders comics, as well as a few flashback issues of Cap here and there. I really enjoy the Invaders comics -- they're a whole lot of fun -- and they do portray Steve and Bucky as great teammates who get along well, but not, I think, in a particularly slashy way. If you want to look only at post-retcon Steve/Bucky, you are limited to comics after 2005. Steve unfortunately died pretty soon after Bucky came back to life -- so they don't really interact -- and then Steve stays dead until 2010, and after that they... still don't really interact much. They never serve on an Avengers team together. Bucky appears only infrequently in Steve's book. I never finished reading Brubaker's run so there may be some canon I am missing but no one has told me about it being particularly slashy for Steve/Bucky; I am told they do interact some in Brubaker's Winter Soldier run, if you want to read them in a book together, but I have not heard anything particularly slashy about it or, indeed, most of their other interactions. As far as I can tell, Brubaker goes straight for the Bucky/Nat in terms of romance, when Bucky comes back, right from the very beginning.

It's clear when Steve and Bucky do interact that they're good friends and that they have fond memories of serving together, and Bucky is closer to Steve than the rest of the Invaders are, probably, but you're not going to find a deep relationship where Bucky is everything to Steve. To the best of my recollection, the last time I saw them together on page in a non-WWII setting having any kind of prolonged conversation was in Avengers Standoff and then Secret Empire, and for most of their interaction, Steve was Hydra. I guess there was that scene at the beginning of Standoff where Bucky cooked him eggs in that diner. That was Real Steve. And that was two entire years ago.

(Okay, the bit after Fear Itself where Steve punches Fury in the face because he's mad Fury lied and didn't tell him Bucky was alive again is pretty great. I will give you that.)

I know that there are two 616 miniseries that MCU Steve/Bucky fans enjoy. One is Captain America: White, and the other is Captain America: Man Out of Time. Cap White is a WWII-set miniseries but it is also one in which the creators have definitely gone hard for kid-sidekick Bucky, so I feel like it's hard to really get a lot of slashiness there. And then there's Man Out of Time, which as we all know tackles Steve's origin story, and it shows how important Bucky is to Steve and how poorly Steve initially fits into the modern world by making him determined to go back in time to the forties. And he does, in fact, go back in time, albeit to a time after Bucky's death. But the thing about Man Out of Time, for me, is that ultimately, Steve chooses the future. When he has to pick between the past and the future, he picks the future. He picks the Avengers. And at the end we see Steve at the Grand Canyon, where Bucky always wanted to go, and, yes, he's obviously thinking of Bucky... but he has, in the end, made a choice to stay with the Avengers, and that's one of the things I actually love the most about Man Out of Time. Steve gets an opportunity to stay in the forties and he instead makes a conscious choice to go be an Avenger.

(There is also the recent Cap annual if you want to see them interacting in WWII in recent canon, which is very good but... it's not, like, super-slashy.)

And then there's the question of how long Steve and Bucky have known each other. Being childhood friends in the MCU gives them a long, long time to know each other, longer than anyone else in the MCU could. At this point in the MCU, Steve has only known the Avengers for, what, six years? He's known Bucky for way longer than that. By the time he meets Bucky again in the MCU he's only been an Avenger for a couple years, right? The Avengers are the new guys. The situation is reversed in 616. Steve meets Bucky in 1940 and they serve together until 1945. That's five years. Depending on what you believe about Marvel's sliding timescale, by the time Steve and Bucky meet again, Steve has been an Avenger for somewhere between ten and fifteen years. If you think about the other founding Avengers (Tony, Thor, Hank, Jan) or the rest of the Kooky Quartet (Clint, Wanda, Pietro), Steve has known them two to three times as long as he's known Bucky -- and the lower bound here is an entire decade. He's known Sam for at least as long as he's known Bucky, and probably longer, since he met Sam in 1969 and that is way closer to the beginning of modern Marvel than it is to the current day. There are all these people whom Steve has had years and years to form deep and enduring friendships and relationships with, before Bucky ever came back into the picture.

So as you can see, the situation in 616 for Steve/Bucky is really, really not the same as it is for MCU, and as far as I can tell, everything that MCU fans like about Steve/Bucky just doesn't play out the same way in 616 for a variety of reasons. If you want a 616 Steve ship with the goddamn single-minded intensity of MCU Steve/Bucky, honestly, 616 Steve/Tony is going to be your best bet, because I can point to multiple major comics events that basically revolve around Steve and Tony and their epic feelings for each other, with the proviso that sometimes these feelings involve them trying to murder each other. But I figure if you like CATWS you are probably okay with that. Also, hey, if you enjoy extremely intense fight scenes in which one character, beaten badly, is lying there, unresisting, staring into the eyes of his former friend while his friend readies the final blow, begging his friend to finish it -- well, let me introduce you to 616 Steve/Tony in Civil War:

So, you know, there's that.

You might ask at this point, okay, well, what would 616 Steve/Bucky look like on its own merits? If it doesn't look like MCU Steve/Bucky, what would it look like? Honestly, post-retcon, I think it would look a hell of a lot like shipping Steve with, say, another one of his fellow Invaders or other WWII teammates. Something like Steve/Namor. (Although probably with less "I resent all the times you tried to murder my friends" than Steve/Namor would have. So maybe Steve/Logan is a better comparison, except I don't remember how much of WWII Logan remembers.) Buddies from World War II, a lot of camaraderie and positive feelings and shared memories to bond over, and it would be sweet, but there wouldn't be any kind of unique dynamic that Steve only shares with Bucky, and I don't think there'd be the intensity that Steve and Bucky have in the MCU. It would be fun. It would be nice. It would be the kind of rarepair you'd request in exchanges. But it probably wouldn't be a juggernaut ship.

Until they start pulling all of MCU back into 616, you're just not going to get a dynamic in 616 where Bucky is Steve's home. You're really not.

Also, uh, if you want to talk about 616 Steve's feelings about home, and who he associates with home, I think we all know that there is a canonical statement about this:

In 616 Steve chooses the future, and I'm going to keep on shipping him with the futurist, the guy whose voice was the first voice he heard, coming out of the ice. The one who's been there for him since he woke up. The one who gave him a home.

So that’s why I don’t ship 616 Steve/Bucky. It’s really, really not the same dynamic as the MCU, and if you’re looking for 616 characters that Steve has repeatedly demonstrated deep and intense affection for, as well as a lasting friendship and partnership... well, there’s Tony, right there.

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practicingmedicine · 3 years

Text

LOADER V1. 1

EXEC VERSION 41.10

32K RAM SYSTEM

15932 BYTES FREE

HOLLOWTAPE LOADED: “THE-LOONEY-BIN”

INITIALISING….

SUCCESS!

> STATUS

Battery Level: 57%

Wireless Signal: (?)

Operating Temperature: 93F

> HEALTH

BP: 120/90

SPO2: 100%

Temp: 98.5F

RR: 14

HR: 75

> TIME

Day: 23 SEP. 2279

Time: 22:12

> CLIMATE

Current Temperature: 72F

Atmospheric Pressure: 753 mm

Background Radiation: 0.431 RAD

---

It was well past my usual bedtime. 10:12 PM, when I translated the clock from military time, and the sun had already set. The sky was too cloudy to see any stars, of course; Even the brilliant light of the moon couldn’t quite make it through. I was tired, both because I was used to a more structured schedule, and because it had been an exhausting day. So much had happened at this point that I wasn’t really in a frame of mind to care about one more piece of work.

Gram had suggested I do something to introduce myself to my new friends before we hit the hay, so I decided to do what I was best at- general assessment! I’d do a head-to-toe examination of each of them. That way, I’d be getting to know each of them in a real literal way, and it gave me an excuse to set up some pip-boy profiles. The Pip Boy makes a great assessment tool, assuming you got the patient in the database already

I looked over each of my patients, then back at my device. 57% battery charge … creating new profiles always took a lot of battery power, but I knew it would hold for the night. If worse came to worst, I could charge it up a little with the glowing energy cell that I always kept in my breast pocket.

I was about ready to perform now, with this makeshift examination room as my stage. It was little more than an abandoned shack that we’d used as a goal post while hiking, and eventually decided to camp by; we’d all be sleeping in nice orange tents. I had used the rickety shelves to set up equipment that I’d need, and propped up an old 3-legged chair against the wall for the patient to sit in. The ranger, who I’d learned was named Tandi, had loaned me a tactical flashlight to provide lighting. Or, I suspected, Gram had made them lend me the flashlight. I’d also commandeered the cart’s radio to get some appropriate music going.

Now, it wasn’t much, but I was grateful for it, because the shed offered privacy. I’d seen firsthand what kind of compromising information could be revealed during this sort of assessment. Forget the eyes, it turns out that STDs are the real window into the soul.

“Alright folks, looks like we’re all set up! Cook, why don’t you come up first?” I suggested, motioning for her to come on forward. She smiled.

“Cool! I actually have a few things that I want an explanation for.”

I ushered her inside, and had her sit down on the stool. I gave her a quick once over; she was about my age, maybe a little older, with freckly brown skin and messy, chin-length black hair that she’d pulled back into a bun. Definitely on the heavier side for a Mojave resident, but other than that she seemed to be taking pretty good care of herself. She had a healthy glow about her that was refreshing to see.

After checking to make sure I had turned the pip-boy all the way off, I removed it from my arm, and clipped it onto Cook’s. Her arm was bigger than mine, so I had to put it a bit lower, but it still fit alright. I turned it on and let it set up a profile. The song on the radio changed as we got settled in.

Blamin' it all,

On the nights on Broadway-

Singin' them sweet sounds,

To that crazy, crazy town...

“I’ve never seen one of these things up close before. Is it going to reveal my deepest, darkest secrets?” Asked Cook, big brown eyes rooted to the glowing green screen. I nodded.

“If you consider the state of your internals to be your deepest, darkest secrets, then sure. You missing anything?” She shook her head as I donned my stethoscope.

“I don’t think so. Are you?”

I looked down at my left hand. I was missing something, actually- I didn’t have a thumb on my left hand. Instead, my father had done some little surgeries, and moved my index finger to where my thumb would be. It worked fine, didn’t hurt me none, so I hardly noticed it. I flexed my hand to demonstrate.

“Yep. Ain’t that neat?” Cook looked mystified.

“Whoa. That is cool! Why are all those fingers so long ?” I shrugged.

“Hell if I know. The whole arm is a little screwed up, but mostly the hand.” And the forearm, I thought about pointing out. There was a huge patch of pale and rubbery skin running along there, but it didn’t seem like she’d noticed yet and the reasons for it being that way weren't the kind of thing that I liked to talk with new folks about. It was my uncomfortable little secret, you know?

“Could it be radiation? Maybe your mom got exposed while she was pregnant,” suggested Cook. I thought for a moment. Had mom been pregnant with me when she got shot?

“Hey, wait a minute- this is your examination, not mine! Keep the speculatin’ to yourself!” Cook shrugged.

“Sorry, I'm a natural speculator. Oh, and, I think your pip-boy is booted up. Am I a new user?” I nodded.

“Here, lemme see it-“ I used the selector wheel to scroll to the thing that said, “YES,” which was a word I could read, and then let it boot up some more. After a few seconds, her profile popped up:

> STATUS

Battery Level: 40%

Wireless Signal: (?)

Operating Temperature: 95F

> HEALTH

BP: 130/80

SPO2: 99%

Temp: 99.5F

RR: 12

HR: 100

WARNINGS >Right Kidney: Absent

---

“I see a warning,” I said. “Do you mind reading it for me?” Cook shook her head. “No, I… well, shit.” She stared at the screen silently for a few seconds. I raised an eyebrow.

“What?”

“It says, right kidney: absent. Is that bad?”

I blinked. “Um, let me see that.” I crouched down next to her, and flicked over to the screen that showed the smiling guy- or, girl, apparently, if the user was female, with little symbols indicating problems. Sure enough, there was a little black warning sign where her left kidney- her right kidney, actually, would be located. “Hm. I don’t reckon it’s a glitch.”

“Okay, but is that bad? Am I going to die before I turn twenty?” she asked, with enough confidence that I was pretty sure she knew the answer. I shook my head.

“Well you might, but not on account of your kidney. Some people just… only have one, I guess.” I thought for a second, then added, “Rule of thumb: If you’ve survived this long without any problems, you’re probably fine.”

That seemed to satisfy her. “Anything else you need to check?” she asked. I nodded.

“A few things. First off, I want to get an idea of what your normal heartbeat sounds like.” I slipped the earbuds of my stethoscope in and placed it against her chest, moving it around a bit. I didn’t hear no beat. “Could you pull your shirt up?” I asked. She gave me a suspicious look.

“I’m wearing a dress. I can’t really pull it up.”

“Okay then, pull it down a bit. I don’t hear nothing,” I replied, trying not to push it too much; apparently some people really didn’t like showing their skin in front of other folks. I always thought that was strange, but I’d learned to respect other people’s weird choices. She sighed and pulled the top of her dress down a bit.

“Still getting more lung than heart,” I said. Cook snickered.

“Well that’s because you’re listening on the wrong side, you dork!” I froze. I took a deep breath, and then I placed it on the other side.

“Oh my god,” I murmured. I stood there for a few more seconds, not sure whether to feel astonished or annoyed

“What?”

“Cook, have you got yourself a twin?” I asked. Cook frowned for a second, then shook her head

“Not that I remember. What’s that have to do with this?”

“Your entire body is flipped! Your heart’s on the wrong side, the pip-boy registered your right kidney as your left kidney, and I’m willing to bet twenty Caps that you’re left handed!” I said, yanking the stethoscope out of my ears. She looked surprised.

“Ambidextrous, actually. I use both my hands for stuff, though I guess I do sort of default to my left! I hadn’t noticed until you mentioned it,” she replied, rubbing her left arm nervously. I shrugged.

“Whatever! It’s harmless, and imagine if someone tried to kill you by shooting you in your heart, but they couldn’t cause it was facing the other way!”

“That would be badass.” she conceded. She stroked her chin. “Like, the hero puts the gun up to my chest and shoots, and then turns his back because he thinks that I’m dying, and then BANG! His friends all gather around for his tragic last words, I laugh an evil laugh and make my escape…”

“But what if the hero-“ I started. Cook started cackling.

“Hey, no, don’t steal my idea! What if his heart was on the wrong side too? Or, it was on the right side, but I didn’t know which side the heart was supposed to be on because mine was wrong!”

“Oh- but then, you both die anyways, cause you still got shot in the lung, and now you’ve got pneumothorax and your lung is gonna collapse!” I realized midway through the sentence that it was a real buzzkill, but Cook didn’t seem to mind. She leaned back in her chair.

“True… Well, I guess it wouldn’t be all that useful then. Still, it’s kind of cool!” She made a little gesture with her thumb and index finger to indicate just how kind of cool it was.

“A little,” I said, still grinning. We both just kind of sat there for a while after that, enjoying our newfound kinship. Cook made a sound like she’d remembered something.

“Oh! I almost forgot- do you have any idea what this weird rashy stuff is? It’s genetic I think, because a few other people in my first tribe had it and I’ve not seen it anywhere else.” She turned her back to me and spread her arms. I hadn’t noticed before, but the backs of her arms and all of the skin I could see on her upper back was covered in these little raised red patches with chalky white centers.

"Psoriasis,” I said immediately. She turned back around looking all sorts of concerned, but I waved her away. “Nothing serious. There are a few different types, but none of them are dangerous. It just means that the top layer of your skin grows too much in some places, which is what makes those weird little scales appear.” She sat back down.

“Is there like, any way I can treat it? The rashy bits itch all the time, and it hurts when I scratch them.”

“Yeah, actually!” She perked up a bit. “Just spend some time with your back to the sun. Make a habit of keeping the rash uncovered, and try to face it towards the sun whenever you’re sitting.”

“Why’s that work?” She asked. I shrugged.

“No idea. My guess is that the sunlight helps kill the weird cells, but I’m a combat clinician, never studied for it specifically. One of my father’s doctor-buddies had psoriasis, and that worked for him. He liked to go around shirtless ‘cause of that,” I explained. Cook nodded.

“Sounds like fun, but I’ll probably just stick to backless dresses- For everyone’s sake.” She laughed, and so I laughed too, even though I didn’t really get what she was joking about. It felt nice to laugh along with someone again.

“Well… I guess you better do your next patient. It’s kinda late,” said Cook eventually, standing up from the rickety chair. I nodded.

“Of course. Been a pleasure talking with you!” I unclipped the pip-boy from her wrist and gave her a friendly wave as she walked out the door.

“Yeah, you too!”

Well, that’s one patient down, I mused. Weird anatomy, but good company! I’d have to get to know her better in the future.

“Next!” I shouted.

-Break-

Battery Level: 23%

Wireless Signal: (?)

Operating Temperature: 95F

>HEALTH

BP: 150/120

SPO2: 97%

Temp: 97.5F

RR: 10

HR: 60

>WARNINGS > Head: Crippled > Right Eye: Crippled > Left Leg: Damaged > Right Kidney: Absent

>TIME

Day: 23 SEP. 2176

Time: 22:56

---

It's not in the way that you hold me,

It's not in the way you say you care!

It's not in the way you've been treating my friends,

It's not in the way that you stayed til’ the end...

Now, I couldn’t read all the warnings, but Tandi sure had a lot of them. I flipped to his- no, HER , I realized, little character icon, then immediately regretted it as the wave of warnings jumped out at me.

“Damaged head, missing right eye, some kinda fracture warning in the right leg…” I stopped for a second. I screwed up my face a little. “Oh, for fuck’s sake- are you missing a kidney too!?” Tandi bobbed her helmet solemnly.

“Okay, whatever, that’s fine, I’ll ask about it later! In the meantime, could you take off your helmet, so I can see your head?” She didn’t respond for a bit, which probably bumped my systolic up at least another ten points. Then, slowly, she brought her hands up to her helmet like Darth Vader, and lifted it off.

Her face was sharp. She had tan, leathery skin and straight blonde hair streaked with grey, tied behind her head and tucked into her collar. The lines of her face suggested that she was about fifty years old, but the sharpness of her features made her look younger. She was kind of familiar, but I couldn’t say why…

That was, of course, ignoring that the entire lower-right side of her face hung somewhat loose, with that side of her mouth all scrunched up at the end. One of her eyes was little more than a swollen, empty socket, and I could see a patch of missing flesh where her synthetic jaw poked through. Before I could start feeling disgusted, though, I got to feeling kinda curious.

“What happened there?” I asked, reaching my hand towards the face to touch the skin. Her glare was enough to make me draw back.

“I had my face shot. Someone put it back together.” She tilted that side of her face towards me. “How’s it look?”

“Magnificent! I’ve never seen anything like it,” I replied, eyes wide with wonder. The fact that she could still sound so normal- well, so relatively normal, if you ignored the bizarre cadence, was mind blowing. “Seriously, whoever did that surgery must of been equal parts crazy and awesome !”

Tandi shook her head. “No. He was a terrible doctor, just a butcher with a steady hand. Guy who made the jaw was smart, but a real shit soldier.”

So it had been a joint effort. That explained the patchwork quality, though I was still a little unclear as to how she’d actually survived getting shot in the melon. That thing contains some pretty vital stuff.

“Well, as neat as that is, you’ve got a lot of problems. Let’s start with your kidney- where the hell is it?” She curled one side of her face into a smile, which caught me off guard, then lifted up her shirt and armor. Among other markings, there was a deep, pink scar running just inferior to her ribcage, all the way across her side.

“I had a comrade named Andrei who needed one. I was stupid back then, so I gave it to him. Tried to take it back later, but that’s another story...” she recounted. She stared off into the darkness, seemed to space out for a while, and I didn’t interrupt her. I often did the same thing.

“… Anyway, now I’m short a kidney. Good luck with Gram.” She started to stand up, grunting a little as her gargantuan form unfolded out of the chair. I motioned for her to sit back down, even though I knew I couldn’t actually do anything if she chose to leave. I got the impression that she could walk right through me if she wanted to, although she didn’t on this particular occasion; tonight, she settled for scowling at me as she sat back down.

“Can I put my helmet back on?” she asked. I nodded.

“Sure. And I can probably help with that eye, if you let me. Removing a little bit of tissue and wearing a patch would probably do you a world of good.” I couldn’t tell if she’d heard me. When the mask was on, she was about as emotive as a Protectron. “Anyways, let’s talk about that leg! You got any idea what happened there?” Tandi stared at me for a few seconds, which was really creepy with the glowing red visor and the gas mask. She shrugged.

“I kill people. Sometimes, I kill them up close. I must have kicked someone’s skull in too hard.”

As usual, the talk about killing upset my brain and my stomach a little bit. I’d already decided that I was never going to kill nobody, swore an oath on it way back at Father’s funeral, but would they expect me to? Cook might understand, but Tandi? I wasn’t sure about Gram either. If he was still alive this many years after the war, I’d be willing to bet he had killed at least a few people...

But, it wouldn’t do to think about that during an examination! I tried to pull myself together.

“So, I don’t know much about what happened, except that it didn’t heal right. It’s too late to just stick some med-x in, but if we measured doses and gave you some down time, I could probably fix it...” Before I was even done speaking, Tandi was shaking her head.

“No, fuck that- I keep my scars. I ain’t about to sit around on my ass for a month so that I can get out of chairs quicker.” I rubbed my temples.

“Well then , it's awful late, and I still haven’t examined Mister Gram! You don’t have any life threatening conditions right now, so I’ll just let you go.” Without much more than a grunt of pain, Tandi stood up, tossed my pip boy on the ground, and started to walk out the door.

“And, uh- Tandi!” Slowly, she turned back around. I couldn’t see her face, but I could tell that her patience was gone. “… Be careful. You’re awful tore up, you know that? If you get hit bad, I don’t think I can offer you more’n a lick and a promise.” She didn’t nod, or do anything that told me that she heard what I was saying. She just stalked away, disappearing into the dark

Oh well. No one could say I didn’t try.

“Next!” I said, with a little less conviction this time.

-Break- Battery Level: 4%

Wireless Signal: (?)

Operating Temperature: 98F

>HEALTH

Vitals:

BP: ?

SPO2: 93%

Temp: 104F

RR: 16

HR: 50 >WARNINGS > Pulse: WARNING! > Airway: WARNING! > Temperature: WARNING! > Circulation: WARNING! > Blood Pressure: WARNING! > Respiration: WARNING! > Liver: WARNING! > Circulation: WARNING! > Dangerous radiation level!

> TIME

Day: 23 SEP. 2176

Time: 23:15

---

Oh, oh, oh (oh, oh, oh)

You're a native New Yorker!

You should know the score by now, (you should know by now),

You're a native New Yorker...

“Well, Gram, congratulations- your biology is so funky that you’ve triggered every single vitals warning. You proud of yourself?” I could tell that Gram was trying to keep a straight face as my Pip-Boy shat itself figuring out how he was still alive. He took a puff on his cigar and kicked back in the chair, causing it to creak dangerously. That didn’t seem to worry him none.

“Oh, you bet your ass I’m proud. Surviving this kind of stuff ain’t just a talent of mine, kid, it’s a passion .” He aired his cigar smoke as I stared him down, really took him all in for the first time; His brown skin was dead and peeling, his eyes were murky and black. And when he breathed, I could hear the fluid in his lungs without holding a stethoscope to his chest.

In the end, I gave up and sat down on the floor.

“To be honest, Gram, I’m kinda lost here. Both of the others had distressing shit, but at least they were human. With you… I don’t even know where to start. Are your organs even in the same place anymore?” He made an incomprehensible expression.

“I dunno- I’ve never checked.” He took another puff of his cigar, which I would comment on, but… well, frankly, that was the least of his worries. Everybody’s gotta die of something, I guess. “If I’m being honest for a moment here, Isaac, I knew you’d be confused. I just had to make sure I was right.”

My heart sank. This had been a test?

“Gram, I know I don’t sound super confident, but that’s just because this is unfamiliar territory for me! Knowledge gaps scare me! If you get shot, I’m still gonna find a way to fix you,” I said, tensing up like I had a gun pointed at me. He chuckled at that.

“You worry too much, Kid- I just want to get to know you in a medical context, make sure I can trust you to handle me and my team. Looking at how worried you are, I think I know the answer.” He gave me a wink, which he had clearly been practicing plenty over the last two hundred years, and I relaxed a little.

“I… Alright. I think I hit it off with Cook, at least, so that’s good,” I replied, sighing and scooting over to the ground beside Gram. The smell of cigar smoke filled my nose.

“Good! She came out with her smile intact, that’s always a good sign! Did you and Tandi get along any?” The mention of her name wiped the grin right off my face. “Wait, don’t answer that question- I think I know the answer. You two are already like a couple of old pals, right?”

I let out a mix between a laugh and a growl, and stared up at the flashlight hanging from the ceiling.

“She’s what my Father would’ve called a ‘ Calamity Jane. ’ That lady has got issues.”

Gram laughed too. “Yeah, you think? Turns out that thirty years of state sponsored slaughter can mess with your head.” Gram swished some more smoke around in his mouth, and blew it out through his nose. “She’s a good woman at heart. She just has this idea in her head that she’s got some kind of duty to her people- to the NCR, to me and Cook- and sometimes she just can’t see anything else.” I guess Gram saw that I was looking forlorn, because he reached over to pat my head. “Don’t worry about it. Just be glad that you managed to get through to Cook. You ain’t gonna be all alone.”

Then Gram handed me my pip-boy back and stood up to leave. I didn’t stop him. As he opened up the rickety wooden door, (which I noticed that only he had bothered to close) he turned around to face me. “G’night, kid. Try and get some sleep tonight. We’ll be walking most of tomorrow, and I want you up at the crack of dawn.” I nodded.

"Course.” Gram tipped his hat, and closed the door behind him.

Blinking to stay awake, I checked the time on my pip boy. It was almost midnight, which meant that the day wasn’t even over yet. Yawning, I turned it off, and plugged it into my emergency energy cell.

September 23rd- It had been the best day of my life, then the second worst, then it got better, and now it was kind of mediocre again. I wasn’t sure how I felt now. Not that it mattered how I felt. I was going to have to stop thinking so much if I wanted to survive the following days, I realized, as I straddled the line between sleep and consciousness. I thought about standing up to turn the light off, but I was so tired that even thinking about standing up made my legs ache. Instead, I just made a sad, feeble attempt to reach the thing with my hand, and then everything went black.

And so that’s what happened on the 23rd of September, 2173; the day that the world ended.

[+]

#fallout #fallout fanfic #fallout fanfiction #fallout fandom

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acewing13 · 7 years

Text

Fanning the Flames, Part 1, V1

“So, Mr. Carlson, anything you want to say?” the Reno-Sparks police officer asked, holding a notebook in his left hand and keeping his right hand near the handcuffs and the thaumium nightstick.

Oh, there’s plenty I want to say. None of it helpful when dealing with an officer of the law. I mean, what was I supposed to say? Here I was, on the third day on a stupid job at a grocery store, and my lane looked like a tornado had come through, with chocolate pudding making ugly brown skids on the tile floor and the wyvern flanks creating little puddles as they thawed. Why does this always happen to me?

“Sorry, sir,” I said, shrugging. “I have no idea what happened. One minute, I was helping a customer with her credit card, then I got smacked by a flying apple.”

The officer sighed, moving his right hand to pull out a pen. “Mr. Carlson, hmm, Michael,” he said, somehow thinking that my first name would fix this situation. “I want to believe you, but you know it is hard to, right? Especially after last month.”

Ahh, the book store. I mean, sure, something similar had happened during in the few weeks that I had been there for. I had only gotten the job thanks to it being owned by a family friend, Naesala of Yosemite, and I had promised to wear an elf talisman (made out of a rattlesnake tail, griffin feathers, and a fragment of Napoleon’s field marshal baton) while I worked. It was supposed to keep away the ‘bad luck’ that had made me near unemployable. And it worked…until it burst into flames a week later. I still think the restraining order is a bit much though.

“Mr. Carlson?”

Oh, yeah. The cop. I shook myself out of my reverie. “Look, Officer, umm, Millhouse,” I said, glancing at his name plate, “I know this looks bad, but I swear, it’s not me.” I hiked up my pants leg until the month old adamantine ankle bracelet was visible. “You can ask my boss, I’ve never taken the stupid thing off. If I can’t perform magic, then how can I be doing any of this?”

The police officer tapped his pen against his notepad, obviously annoyed at my outburst, then he said, “Unless you’re casting through the adamantine band….”

I blinked at his statement, then started laughing. No, I started cackling like a mad witch, having to brace myself on my legs to stop myself from falling to the floor. There’s no way he’s serious, right? Regardless, it was good to laugh like that again. It had been a long time since something had amused me that much. After a few moments, I recovered enough to look back up at the cop, whose face was a bright shade of red, like a dwarven bloodroot mushroom. I guess he had been serious. Who does he think he is, some amateur Thaumatoligist?

“Sorry, sir,” I said, trying to salvage the situation, though a residual chuckle in my throat made me sound even less serious than before. “But if you had been rejected by the Magical Technical College three times, specifically because you could only cast the easiest and most useless cantrips, you would laugh to.”

“Be that as it may,” the police officer said, gritting his teeth as he rapidly wrote on a notebook, “I think you’re going to have to come down to the station tomorrow. We’re going to need to go over all of your little incidents and see if something can be done about it.”

What? All of the incidents? I’ll be there all week! “Please, sir,” I begged, “Can’t you just fine me or something? I’m trying to move on with my life here.”

“Sorry, Mr. Carlson,” the cop said, putting his pen away and handing me my orders. “I don’t like the increasing pace of events happening around you. Sure, no one has been hurt, yet.” He turned to leave, but then looked at me again. “Don’t even think of skipping town. Show up at nine tomorrow morning or I will get a warrant.” Glaring at me with all of the authority he could bring to bear, he continued, “Do I make myself clear?”

Why does this happen to me? “Yes, sir,” I said, taking the summons from his hand.

As the police officer left, a voice behind me said, “You said this wouldn’t be a problem, Michael.”

Turning around, I saw that it was my boss, Robert “Bob” Talbot, who was frowning at the mess.

“Yeah,” I said, rubbing my eyes as I looked at my aisle. “Sorry, Bob. I’ll get this cleaned up right now.”

My boss slowly shook his head. “No, Spencer and Joseph are going to deal with it. You are going to hand me your keys and apron.”

No. No, no, no, no, no… ““Please, Robert,” I said, my knees buckling as I tried to think of something to say. “You know how much I need this job. You know this isn’t my fault!”

Robert, who had been my friend since fifth grade, sighed, his shoulders slumping as he shook his head again. “I had to call corporate about this. They’re not going to let you stay. You know how much work I had to do even get you the job in the first place. Heck,” he said, snorting in derision, “I almost lost my job, but thankfully, my boss likes me.” He looked at me and shrugged. “Sorry, Mike.”

Of course you’re fine. You don’t have to deal with wyvern meat hitting you in the face. I mean, come on, they doubled the thickness of the stupid band for goodness sakes!

I did my best to not let my anger show on my face as I took off my apron, took out the keys to the cash register out of my pocket, and handed them to Bob. “Thanks for giving me a chance, Bob.”

“Yeah,” my boss replied, dropping the keys in his pocket of his jeans and putting the apron over his shoulder. “I’ll come by with your pay tomorrow, okay?”

Don’t want me to come back, huh? Figures. Even my friends have to abandon me.

“Sure,” I said, nodding as I started towards the door. Don’t even need to clean out my locker, since I didn’t have anything in it. Pushing on the door, I turned and started on my long walk home.

Okay, I really need something to distract me. Starting on my walk home, I passed the newspaper dispenser. Wonder what’s in the news. Instead of turning around, I reached in a nearby trash can and pulled out a newspaper. Reagan Beats Hart By a Landslide, today’s headline read, as I wiped ripe banana off of the full page picture showing the ex-movie star, now presidential elect’s grin as he shook his vice president’s hand.

Hah, everyone else was saying that Reagan was going to get destroyed in the election. Turns out it went the other way around. Course, it didn’t help that Reno and Sparks are tied to the elven community in Tonapah, who hate him for joking during a mic check about nuking their enclaves. The high-minded elves are kind of touchy about that. Happens when the same leaders who were in charge during the First Fairy War are still in charge after the Second.

These thoughts took me a ways down Oddie Boulevard, holding the open the newspaper and looking at the state by state results when a semi-truck drove dangerously close to the sidewalk. I scurried to a nearby business entrance and stayed there until I caught my breath. Stupid truckers. Why do they drive so recklessly? I sighed, relieved I still was alive and threw the newspaper in a convenient trash can as I turned off Oddie onto Sullivan Lane, a straight shot to home. Ugh, Mom hasn’t left yet, has she? How am I going to explain this to her?

I still hadn’t come up with an answer by the time I reached home. Maybe I can go around the back so she doesn’t see me? I saw that was impossible as I saw her leaning on the blue Volkswagen Bug, arms folded and looking right at me as I walked down the street towards her. Well, no avoiding her now.

“Hi, Mom,” I said, once I reached her. It’s weird to be taller than Mom. “About to head to work?”

“Soon,” she said, dressed in khaki slacks and a MGM Casino polo shirt, with her brown hair tied back in a ponytail and her purse sitting on her left shoulder. “But I wanted to talk to you before I left.”

Oh, come on. Did Robert call ahead of me or something? Punk. “Did you hear about the incident in the grocery store?” I asked, rubbing my eyes.

“Yeah,” she said, idly replacing a loose gray hair behind her ear. “Dustin came over to talk to me about it… you know,” she continued, raising an eyebrow at my confusion, she said, “Officer Millhouse…, come on Michael, the police officer you spoke with at the grocery store?” Ah, that guy. Must be ex-SWAT, which would explain his interest in my condition. She shook her head in bemusement and continued, “You really need to do a better job of remembering names, Michael.”

I rolled my eyes. “I had other things on my mind right then, Mom. Like losing my job.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” she said, her face instantly softening and pulling me into an embrace. “I’m sorry that things aren’t working out.”

I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry as I returned the hug. This is what I get for having a former witch of the Society of Witchcraft and Thaumaturgy as a mother. She takes the weirdness of my life in stride and is always on my side in these situations. A lesser human would have kicked me out of the house after the third time the curtains had caught on fire, but Megan Carlson née Beckett just took it in step. “I’ll live, Mom,” I finally managed to say.

“Anyway,” she said, letting me go and readjusting her purse. “Your father’s last child support payment finally came through, so I got you a new game for your videogame console and some pizza for dinner tonight.” She smiled and continued, “Don’t party to hard, okay?”

Oh, yeah. Uh huh, I thought as I put my best smile on and said, “Will do, Mom.” Won’t be partying too hard.

Her eyes narrowed for a second, sensing that something was off with my response. But she looked at her watch and shook her head. “Got to go,” she said, before kissing me on the cheek and getting in the VW Bug. I waved good bye as she sped off down 15th St, towards downtown Reno.

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