Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 12
"Four attackers. Database says the leader is King Cobra, green costume and hood, enhanced strength and agility. Strongman is Death Adder, giant man-reptile, he has paralytic poison claws and tail as well as being a powerhouse. Third one is a guy with a nasty sonic attack mounted in a proshetic tail, calls himself Rattler. Last one is a woman who fires paralysis beams called Asp. You'd better hurry, Sonar's already down and Visi's being run ragged!" Robert's voice sounded in their headset.
"ETA one minute!" Cap called into his headset as he floored the pedal. "Visi, can you give me a callout?"
"She's in stealth mode, no comms." Robert said.
"Camera view has- shit! Visi just got tagged somehow, she's visible and down-"
"Engaging." Cap replied with icy determination.
The first day of legwork and rousts had produced no results regarding the assassins that had been sent for Coupe. The only noteworthy incident of the day was when Punch Up and Malevola had actually run into a completely unrelated case while doing their legwork, a meeting engagement with a villain called Toxic who'd been making a major purchase from an underworld arms dealer. Several cyborg-augmented thugs had been captured along with a truckload of weapons, but Toxic had escaped.
What few scraps of intel had been turned up had confirmed the tip on the assassins as being genuinely in town, so Blazer had authorized a second day of 'limited service calls' as the team hit the streets yet again. And late in the morning the case had broken wide open not via turning up a useful tip, but by having the sheer bad luck of Sonar and Invisigal walk directly into the entire team of assassins as they showed up to try and buy some intel from the exact same contact that the two heroes had just finished visiting. The chance meeting had turned into a running pursuit as the quartet of snake-themed killers had taken off after them, but even though they'd been cornered and downed eventually Visi's knowledge of Torrance's back alleyways still had let her keep the duo ahead of the pursuers for just long enough for their backup to get there.
The quartet of supervillains had been too focused on their targets, too eager to close in for the kill after having finally caught and cornered their prey. And so they hadn't paid enough attention to the truck coming down the street towards them until Cap jinked the wheel and took it up and over the curb to slam directly into Death Adder.
Golem leapt off the truck's open bed as it came to a stop and walked straight through Rattler's sonic blast without even feeling it, smashing him into the ground with a furious roar. Cap leapt out of the truck cab and knocked out King Cobra with a shield toss before his feet even touched the ground, and the shieldless Cap then acrobatically dodged Asp's venom bolt and sent her smashing to the ground with a capoeira kick. A moment after that street shook slightly with the impact of Golem putting in a finishing stomp on Death Adder, who'd actually managed to shake off the impact of the truck and had been dazedly climbing to his feet.
"Visi?" Cap ran to where she was kneeling in the street adjacent to Asp's unconscious body, puffing into an inhaler. Sonar was just visible lying down behind a parked car nearby.
"He-" Visi gasped for breath. "We - fuck!" she wheezed twice more before the inhaler began to work, and she finally returned it to her pocket.
"Sorry, Captain." Sonar whispered weakly. "I tried, but-"
"He couldn't take off, King Cobra had clipped his wing with his first shot in that ambush." Visi explained weakly from behind Cap. "Then when they caught up to us again he got tagged by Death Adder trying to keep him off me, and then Rattler's damn sonic attack absolutely wrecked him with that sensitive hearing of his. At the end he was tanking practically all the muscle there by himself."
"You did
fine, Sonar." Cap assured him as he knelt over the wounded hero. "You held out until your backup got there. That's all you needed to do."
"Flambae is here!" his voice sounded out on the radio immediately before the flaming man himself came swooping down out of the sky. "Are you all right?" he called out urgently.
"Sonar's down, we need a medevac." Cap said crisply as he did his best to triage and stabilize the casualty. "Can you fly and carry him at the same time?" he asked Flambae.
"Easily." the man replied as he picked the fallen man-bat up. "Nearest hospital?"
"
Clinic at the SDN facility." Robert ordered.
"He'll need the proper antivenom for what Death Adder used, we're getting some prepped here."
"On my way!" Flambae acknowledged, and with a whoosh of flame he flew back into the air.
"Incident secured." Robert announced on the team channel.
"Prism, report back to link up with Flambae. Cap, Golem, after you've gotten your prisoners safely in the police wagon you bring Visi back here as well. Everybody else, resume assignments. We've got what was almost certainly the team of assassins coming after Coupe taken down, but let's not assume they were the only ones in play until we finish double checking."
"Are you okay?" Cap asked Visi worriedly.
"I fucking lost out to
perfume, would you believe?" Visi spat furiously, as her and Cap sat adjacent to each on the curb while they waited for the police. "I was heading for Rattler so I could sap him over the head and get his sonic attack out of Sonar's ears, and as soon as I got near Asp that stank-ass whatever she was wearing gave me a fucking spasm! Even with me holding my breath, just the whiff I got up my nose was- what the hell was that scent, Eau de Sarin?" She furiously scuffed one shoe on the pavement. "There's Sonar bleeding out at like three to one odds, and I can't even get a solid hit in without losing out to an atomizer full of overpriced flowery shit. Fuck, even before we had to run King Cobra just fucking tanked everything I sent-" Visi fumed as she stared angrily down at her skinned knuckles.
"One whiff from Asp's perfume and you were down? The asthma was
that disabling?" Cap asked concernedly.
"No, but as soon as I started to choke I lost my invisibility and remember, I was like only eight feet away from Asp. I managed to duck her first shot just enough to only get winged by it but that still left me numb and shaking and not good for much. Lucky for me that's just when you guys showed up."
"You still did a great job staying ahead of them on foot for long enough to get here." Cap reassured her. "Even with Sonar unable to fly, that alley run you led him on almost lost them. And there were four of them."
"Running and hiding. And then getting taken out of the fight on the first solid hit that connects." Visi replied bitterly. "Real fuckin' list of achievements there."
"I'll… let you two talk." Golem's slow, lumbering voice sounded almost amused as he moved away to go secure the prisoners.
"I only got my powers after I joined the Army," Cap began slowly, reflectively, letting Visi have a moment to wind down. "Before the super-soldier serum, I had a lot of health problems. Including asthma."
"Don't lie to try and make me feel better, Cap." Visi snapped at him. "They wouldn't let you enlist with asthma."
"I had a special waiver." Cap explained. "Dr. Erskine didn't consider my physical imitations a problem, because the serum was supposed to fix them all anyway. And I was considered the ideal candidate for the project psychologically, better than anybody else they could get."
"You really had asthma… in the 20s and 30s?" Visi's anger fell away as she looked at him wonderingly. "What, was it like some
mild version or something? 'Cause I doubt they had rescue inhalers back then."
"'Mild' is not the word I'd use." Cap said sardonically. "As for inhalers, I'm not sure if they had them but I certainly know
I didn't have any. Couldn't possibly have hoped to afford one." Cap said. "They gave me breathing exercises, said they'd help. I guess maybe they did, if New York smog back in the era of no pollution controls didn't kill me even with twenty-four years of trying. Or maybe the exercises just helped me not to panic." Cap carefully didn't look at Visi, letting her preserve her dignity. "But yeah. Never 100% knowing when the next lungful of whatever you breathed might trigger a spasm, or how bad it might be… having to keep a little part of yourself on edge at all times just in case… that was not a fun way to live at all. So believe me, I get it." He put a comforting hand on Visi's shoulder. "You don't like people knowing?"
"I don't even know why I didn't tell you." Visi answered the question Cap had really asked with a little catch in her voice. "SDN already knew, the rest of the team knew… I'm surprised you didn't see it in my file, that weekend you were helping with the paperwork."
"Chase didn't let me have those parts of the personnel files for everyone, said that it wasn't necessary for what we were doing and I wasn't there to break other peoples' privacy for my own curiosity." Cap replied. "And he was entirely right about that."
"I just… people react to it, sometimes." Visi said softly. "I didn't want to weird you out or anything."
"Well, I'd like to know what kind of inhaler you use so I can carry a spare for you." Cap offered before wincing briefly. "Assuming that we get any non-emergency calls together in the future. Forgot about that for a second."
"Wouldn't I be
more likely to need a spare inhaler during an emergency?" Visi teased.
"You're right." Cap smiled. "And-"
"Police are here." Golem lumbered to his feet.
"I'll talk to them." Cap replied, and Visi stayed behind while he went over.
"He likes you." Golem said suddenly, as they both watched Cap dealing with the responding police units.
"It's not like that." Visi protested.
"Do you like
him?" Golem asked her simply.
"Not that way." Visi shook her head firmly. "He's fun to hang with, maybe, but there's nothing serious."
"Visi." Golem looked at her disbelievingly.
"He'll be gone in a couple months anyway, when they promote him to some shiny Downtown team the instant he's eligible." Visi replied helplessly. "So why even think about it?"
"He might stay. If you asked him." Golem said wisely.
"You're
dreaming." Visi shook her head. "And I wouldn't even have the right to ask."
"Okay, it's all wrapped up." Cap greeted them as he returned. "Let's load up and get back to base."
"You got it, Cap." Visi smiled at him cheerfully… only for her expression to turn rueful the instant his back was turned.
"What are
you looking at?" Visi turned and snapped at Golem.
* * * * *
"Good job, everyone." Robert said professionally as he stood at the head of the conference table for the afternoon briefing. "First the good news, Sonar got a little banged up but once we countered Death Adder's venom there was no other serious injury. He just needs a day of observation and fluids… and letting the bruises heal up some… and he'll be back in action Monday."
Visi's sigh of relief was audible on the other side of the table, even over the general murmur of appreciation from the rest of the team.
"Also, Coupe's in the clear. The, uh, Serpent Society-" Robert continued.
He paused to let the entire room, Cap included, indulge in a brief round of laughter at the sheer
absurdity of that name and theming. Even Robert's own somber mood lightened momentarily.
"-were the only team Coupe's old employers had sent, and between how much money they'd wasted on hiring the snakes and the clear message we sent, chatter is that they're cutting their losses." Robert continued. "They're still mad at Coupe, but they're not going to throw good money after this much bad money."
"That makes sense. She already testified against them as part of her stayin' out of prison, so all the damage she could do to 'em's already been done. Takin' her down now is just for sendin' a message, and after what we did the message is gettin' too mixed to be worth it. Her old mob likes profit more than payback." Punch Up said soberly.
"And that leads me directly to the
bad news." Robert announced like the tolling of a funeral bell, his shoulders slumping in weariness. "After… after the takedown of Mecha Man several months ago, it was assumed that the master villain Shroud had left town after achieving his objective. He'd ended the career of his arch-nemesis' son. Gotten his final victory. And also lost his last chance to recover the Astral Pulse. So why stick around?" Robert exhaled heavily. "Except that skirmish yesterday has shown that it's very likely that assumption was made in error. Toxic, you see, was Shroud's field team leader for the villain squad he put together that defeated Mecha Man. And unlike most of the other villains involved in that battle, who's been locals, he'd originally come into town with Shroud. Toxic had been a key part of Shroud's original breakout from prison in the first place. If Toxic is still here, then so's his boss."
"What do we know about him?" Cap asked simply.
"Shroud is… dangerous." Robert finally replied. "He's a technological genius, an exceptional planner,
relentlessly thorough, and he thinks ahead. The trap for Mecha Man... had already anticipated the possible tactics that Mecha Man was going to use, even the ones that had been improvised on the spot. Mecha Man only escaped with their life by gambling that life on a very risky maneuver that could easily have gone either way… and as everyone knows, Mecha Man's suit still suffered irreparable damage and they were in a coma for weeks." He looked up at the group. "If you're entering a situation that it even looks like Shroud has had a chance to prepare for, then the best advice is to abort immediately. And to pray that you spotted the trap far enough in advance that your exit route isn't already blocked." Robert stopped briefly and continued in a firmer tone of voice. "Everything else we know about him is in the files, please stop and pick up a copy of them for your weekend reading. Not that we have even the beginnings of a plan for Shroud right now, but…" Robert trailed off.
"Bastard's probably already putting a plan together for us." Flambae said grimly. "Or for the city. Or for whatever the fuck he's still here for."
"Undoubtedly." Blazer's voice broke in as she entered the room. "But Shroud's still a long range problem. For right now, I just wanted to add my voice to Robert's in congratulating the team on the
excellent performance you've given for the past couple of days."
"You all came together, you all had each other's back in the clutch, and you all got the job done." Robert affirmed. "Well done, everybody."
"Z-Team, hell yeah!" Prism gave a cheerful thumbs-up.
"Not to ruin the moment, but has there been any further word on Coupe?" Punch Up broke in.
"… no." Robert conceded. "She hasn't checked in officially or reached out to any of us, and there haven't been any sightings."
"Haven't heard anything neither." Punch Up said somberly. "Well, hopefully she'll get the word over the weekend and reach out later. And even if she doesn't… at least she's still safe."
"
But for right now it's Friday afternoon, the sun's getting low, and we've already had a long day. So I'm declaring an early amnesty." Blazer lifted the mood. "Those of you on weekend rotation know who you are, I'll see the rest of you next week."
The whole team got up and headed cheerfully to the door. "Hey, you guys want to come out with us for drinks, or you got your own plans?" Flambae called out to Cap and Visi, and they both momentarily froze.
"Uh, we're good!" Visi finally answered after a moment and Flambae just gave a knowing chuckle as the rest of the Z-Team headed out.
"That was… strange." Robert said to Cap and Visi as the rest of the team faded into the distance. "Talking about myself in the third person like that. I felt like I should have had a monocle and an accent." He tried to joke.
"Are you okay?" Visi asked.
"I'm just… telling myself that Shroud's still being around for round two means I've still got a chance to beat him." Robert clenched his fist, his voice taut with rage. "Assuming I can get back anything to beat him
with…" Blazer placed a comforting hand on Robert's shoulder, and he relaxed.
"You've already got that." Cap assured him. "You've got us."
Robert nodded in brief acknowledgement, and Cap and Visi left him alone with Blazer as they headed out.
"You gonna be okay?" Cap asked Sonar as him and Visi stood by the side of his hospital bed.
"Eh, it only hurts when I laugh." Sonar tried to joke.
"Seriously." Cap said somberly. "Visi says you saved her life out there.
Thank you. You ever need help, don't hesitate to ask."
"I think… I think I'm already starting to get it." Sonar replied after a long pause. "What I need."
"I know." Visi agreed seriously. "You spend that much time letting yourself down, then getting even
one moment where you don't feel like a complete fuck-up is kinda…."
"Addictive?" Sonar grinned crookedly.
"I think she was going to say 'fulfilling'." Cap chuckled. He looked around. "I'd have thought at least some of the others would touch base before heading out." he said with mild disapproval.
"They passed through before the afternoon meeting." Sonar reassured them. "It's you two that put work first." he teased.
"Look, you get bored later on and want me to smuggle anything in here that the docs won't let you have, just text me." Visi said. "… almost anything." She trailed off embarrassedly.
"Have a nice weekend, guys." Sonar laughed gently. "I'll see you Monday."
* * * * *
"It's nice to finally see your face." Visi smiled as the two of them headed down the sidewalk with Cap in his civilian clothes. As Visi's 'costume' was mostly-normal streetwear and no mask, she hadn't needed to change.
"Well, we were running out of places I could go in the suit. Work… a couple diners where you were a regular…
definitely not Crypto Night." Steve deflected.
"Eugh. Overpriced fancy-label booze, bitchy snob of a bartender, stuck-up clientele that looks down their nose at anyone not a 'real hero' while being largely corpo shills." Visi agreed vehemently. "That's why I waved off Flambae's offer of drinks. The gang's mostly given up on Crypto Night as well, and that means the only place the team can go drinking in costume is the, uh, villain bar."
"Probably not a good idea to walk me in there in costume." Cap agreed. "And doesn't sound like the kind of place I'd want to show my face."
"Very likely not. And so now everybody thinks we're having our own private date night when we kinda just got, uh, assumptioned into it, so if you just want to call it a…" Visi withdrew into herself. "I mean, it's not like you'd
actually have to-" she began to ramble faster and faster as her expression drew up into a pensive, wistful yearning that just tore at Cap's-
"I had a dream about you the other night." Cap's blurted admission stunned both of them into silence.
"… well I better have been fuckin' awesome, then." she eventually replied with a manful attempt at bravado.
"Not that way." Cap said gently as he sat down on a nearby bus stop bench and patted it in invitation. Visi tentatively sat down an arm's length away from him. "But… kinda that way."
"Gonna need some
context here, Cap." Visi looked searchingly at him.
"I told you about how I went into the ice. Well… in the dream, I hadn't. My final mission had gone fine and I was back home in New York all gussied up in my class A's. The whole unit was there celebrating the end of the war at the fanciest club in town, everything on the house, nothing too good for our boys. And I was finally going to do what I'd been waiting the whole war to come home to, go out on the town and have a dance with my best girl." Steve looked up at the early evening's stars. "And then there she was out on the floor, and I went up to her and she turned around…" He turned to look directly into Visi's wondering eyes. "And it was you."
"Oh." Visi breathed, stunned down to her shoetops.
"And so that's why I've been so out of it the past couple of days." Steve said.
"And you didn't say anything? What, I was only good enough for you in dream version?" Visi shot back, her voice hurt.
"No!" Cap protested hurriedly. "I-" He firmed his chin. "I had a million excuses, but the truth is… I was scared."
"What would
you possibly have to be scared of about dating?" Visi said incredulously.
"Pushing too fast." Cap replied immediately, his voice taut. "Being too late. Missing a signal,
catching a signal…" His shoulders slumped. "Everything."
"… did you leave a girl behind when you went into the wormhole?" Visi asked gently as she stared down at her own shoetops. "Was that it? I was just too soon?"
"There was only one girl. Peggy, the girl I was gonna dance with-" Cap began.
"Not to be mean, but that is
such a World War II movie love interest name that I really should have expected it from you." Visi couldn't help but wisecrack.
"I think every man in the Howling Commandoes made a joke like that to her once." Cap agreed amusedly, to Visi's relief. "Howard was even brave enough to make it twice, which made him a committee of one."
"Think I'm beginning to see how you could mentally swap me in for her." Visi twitched a momentary smile.
"She was still alive when I went into the wormhole… but of course it wasn't the same." Cap said gently. "She'd gone on to have her whole life without me, after everybody originally thought I'd died. Got married, had a family, had a career… and gotten old, while I stayed frozen." He shook his head sadly. "I still went to go see her in the nursing home from time to time, but on a good day she could remember why I was there, how I'd been found alive again. On a bad day she'd think she was just seeing ghosts." He sighed. "Alzheimer's."
"How did a guy as nice as you get on God's personal shit list that hard?" Visi wondered. "But if she'd already moved ahead like that, and you'd accepted that, then it wasn't her." Her lip quivered and she blinked away tears. "Was it me?"
"No!" Cap rushed to reassure her. "I know you've got stuff in your past you're not proud of, but that was
not it. I like
you, not some cleaned-up dream version of you. But I knew you were already going through a lot, and I thought it was more important for you to have a friend you could trust than it was for me to have a new girlfriend."
"And did you at any point in that entire excuse for a thought process think to
ask me what I might have wanted?!?" Visi said heatedly.
"Only about a million times an hour." Steve replied immediately. "But like I said, I was scared. What we already had going was still one of the nicest things I'd ever had since I got out of the ice." He sighed and looked up again. "I didn't want to ruin that."
"… yeah." Visi looked at Cap sympathetically. "I get it.
Believe me, I get it." She breathed out heavily. "You want to hear about what I've been feeling from my side?"
"Only if you want to tell me." Cap said resolutely.
"Okay, you've been doing things to my head practically from the getgo, did you know?" Visi began. "Sure, that first minute you walked in the door I was only just '
Oh my God, they're sending in some shiny PR showpiece to look down his nose at all of us and he's such an asshole he literally
wrapped himself in an American flag, can you believe this crap?'"
Cap surprised her by actually laughing briefly at her roast of him. "Remind me to tell you about a man called Tony Stark sometime. That is almost exactly the same reaction he had when we first met."
"But then we're busting those art thieves and you're just grinning ear to ear while we set up the prank. And then we're both laughing our asses off at the
looks on their faces when they realized how they'd been played, and I'm thinking to myself
Hey, this is actually kinda nice! And I'm suddenly realizing that I really need to watch myself around you or else I might make an ass out of myself. So I poke at you a little more to try and, I dunno, give you a chance to live down to expectations… and then you not only stand up for me even after I punched out our supervisor, but right out of nowhere you're saying that you want
me as your first choice. Out of the entire team."
She sniffled and reached into a pocket for a tissue. "I know you'd just meant 'first choice for co-worker' and not the other thing, but still. Literally nobody had ever said a thing like that to me in my entire fuckin'
life."
"In hindsight, I sorta figured." Cap encouraged her gently.
"So yeah, from that point on, wheeeeeeoooooo." She made a bomb-falling noise as she waved her hand dramatically downward. "Now I've graduated with honors from the School of Pretending Not To Give A Shit, so I don't know if you clued in-"
"Visi, if 'clued in' was the bright center to the universe then I was on the planet that it was farthest from." Cap said firmly.
"Han shot first, don't believe the corporate lies." Visi replied instantly. "But yeah. Every day after that I thought I knew what to expect, and every day I caught another curve ball. Over and over I'm expecting you to… I dunno, change your mind, let on that I was just a pity project, find a better girl,
something - and instead you see me hit rock bottom, and you help me back up like I hadn't even fallen down." Her voice briefly shook with tremulous wonder. "And after that it just kept getting nicer and nicer, and closer and closer…. and I still had a million reasons in my head why it would never work. And that kept going even after I was barely recognizing myself. I mean, have you asked anybody on the team how I used to behave
before you showed up?"
"Punch Up mentioned a little about how you used to be more… bitter." Cap trailed off diplomatically.
"He means I was a fuckin' bitch." Visi admitted frankly. "
Nobody on the team liked being near me, and with damn good reason. But around you… it's really not surprising that everybody else seemed to clue in that something was going on between us before either of us admitted it to ourselves. Because the way I was going they had to have been thinkin' that I'd been replaced by a pod person. You even corrupted my
vocabulary. Go back in time and listen to me the week before you showed up, my mouth made Chase look like a
nun. But for some reason words just come out of me
different around you. I… I mean, they say catching feelings sometimes does weird things to your head, but is it always
this deep?"
"Visi, my romantic history is a bunch of pity dates that were double dates my best buddy hooked up for me and him, and where not a single one of the dames so much as called back." Cap replied. "Peggy was the only break in that streak, and although we'd been friends for years we'd only had our first kiss the day I went into the ice. So I really wouldn't know."
"There is no alternate universe in the entirety of God's Creation weird enough that
you could only pull pity dates." Visi said firmly. "You're like Blonde Blazer's even hotter twin brother!"
"Oh, right." Cap realized. "I forgot nobody here knows that the way I look now? Is
not the way I looked before I got powers."
"Yeah, I get that being super-cut like you are now is a great glow-up, but that wouldn't change your bone structure. That just means you were average-looking before." Visi replied. "Average guys get second dates all the time."
"It did change my bone structure. And average is not how I'd describe… okay." Cap's jaw firmed with decision. "I need something to draw on. I want to show you."
"There's a dollar store over there." she pointed, and they got up and went inside.
"There." Cap said, handing Visi the pad he'd been furiously speed-sketching in for the past several minutes. "That's me."
Visi looked down and studied the scrawny caricature of a person that Cap had penciled. Despite the speed at which he'd worked, the likeness was remarkably detailed and textured. Visi raised an eyebrow in awe at the artistic talent she'd just seen.
"You should draw manga." she said immediately. "This is some
amazing work."
"That's your review of the art. What's your opinion of the artist?" Cap asked expressionlessly.
Visi looked down at the rendition of Cap's pre-serum self, seeing the skinny, awkward limbs, the posture, the almost visible ribs peeking out from underneath the short t-shirt. Cap had drawn a picture of himself in Army PT gear and boots, from when he'd been struggling through Camp Lehigh as a recruit prior to the actual serum injection. She looked back up at Steve's face, comparing it to the face he'd drawn.
"The body's different, of course, but… it's the same face. The same eyes." She shocked Cap with her answers. "… and the same heart?" she questioned.
Cap took a deep breath. "The entire reason Dr. Erskine chose me is because he didn't want the serum to mentally change the person getting it. Just about the last thing he told me before he died was that more than anything, he wanted me to not let it get to my head. For me to stay the person I'd already been before he'd injected me."
"So that's a yes." Visi said softly. "And if that's true… then I wish I'd known this guy when I was growing up." She handed the sketch back to Cap. "I think I would have liked him."
Cap exhaled as if he'd been gut-punched, almost doubling over. "Really?" He almost begged.
"Uh, I was the skinny dorky kid with asthma too, remember?" Visi quirked a grin at him. "You really think
I'd have dropped some ableist shit on you if we'd grown up next door? A guy as nice as you are?" Her expression softened into something more warm and loving. "You've really never had anyone say that to you before?"
"Finally found a landmine." Cap was able to force out eventually. "But it was a good one." He wiped away tears. "Because before you, only one girl had ever said that to me. That's why she was the only one."
"Shit, Cap, we're supposed to just be at the asking-each-other-out stage at this point and instead-" Visi tried to shake off the sheer intensity of her feelings and refocus. "Look, we are both so super emotional right now I don't think we could decide which way was up."
"Please don't use the words 'rain check', I've got a superstition." Cap tried to joke.
"But… yeah, we have gone
way past 'Cap' and 'Visi' territory with this." She looked up at him and pierced Cap's heart with that same cute little smile he'd first seen at the leaderboard on cut day, the one he still saw in his dreams. "Hey there. I'm Courtney." She held out her hand.
"It's wonderful to meet you, Courtney. I'm Steve." He smiled back and took her hand between his own for a long moment, and their fingers briefly clenched.
"And despite all these feels we're having trouble sorting through right now, I think we can both agree that Steve
likes Courtney… and that Courtney definitely likes Steve." she continued as they released each other's hands.
"Now if we could only figure out where the road went from there." Steve commiserated.
"Look. I get that you like to always be the star-spangled man with a plan-" Courtney began, only to stop dead at Steve's flinch. "… another landmine?"
"
Embarrassing one." Steve blushed. "It's okay, it didn't hurt. Except my dignity."
"Oh, you
gotta explain this one to me." Courtney asked eagerly.
"No, I don't think I will." Steve replied politely after a distinct pause.
"Spoilsport." She stuck out her tongue impishly and continued. "My point is, for all that you've been trying to corrupt me with your 'actually thinking ahead' stuff, I think the only way we're going to get through this is to wing it. Because we are way deep in the undiscovered country for both of us."
"I just don't want to screw this up." Steve said plaintively. "... but we were already screwing it up, weren't we?" he realized.
"I think we only
stopped screwing it up just now." Courtney agreed. "The way each of us was waiting for the other one to make the first move - okay, look, I love romcoms, I admit it. But that's to
watch. Not to
live through."
"You're right." Steve nodded back. "So… well, to continue the earlier analogy, the way you get through a minefield is one step at a time. And checking in at every step to make sure you're not about to push on something too hard and trigger an explosion."
"Yeah, kinda like that. We… we hang out, we relax, we get to know each other…" Her voice caught briefly. "And if we work out, we work out. But even if we don't…" she trailed off pensively.
"I'm still with the 'wanting it to work out'." Steve admitted frankly. "But I think I get what you're saying. Even if we don't go the distance – God forbid – but even if, as long as we really did our best at it, then we can… our
friendship can survive it."
"Yeah." Courtney nodded her head vigorously. "Like that. I mean… life is short. Grab that opportunity now, might not be there tomorrow."
"Okay." Steve nodded, as him and Courtney both took a moment and caught their breath, letting the recent intensity cool down to a nice warm glow. "So… what do two good friends who are slowly exploring something more go do on a Friday night?"
"They… go to the movies?" Courtney tentatively offered, and then broke out in a beaming grin at Steve's smile.
"So,
'Typecast 2'. What's it about?" Steve asked her as he came back down the aisle with an armful of snacks and took his seat next to hers. They both reached into the popcorn bucket at the same time and wordlessly grinned at each other over the brief sparks when their fingers touched.
"The first one in the series was about this struggling actress who gets this big role from a movie star that mistakes her for his childhood best friend, but it turns out he's got a secret too, and they spend like ninety minutes falling in love with the people each of them thought the other one was before finding out who they really are, and then they realize they like the real person even better." Courtney explained eagerly.
"I see what you mean about entertaining to watch but not to live through." Steve acknowledged. "Because you think that starting a relationship based on a lie would be a recipe for disaster."
"Way too often." Courtney agreed, before continuing quickly. "But the whole warm fuzzy is about anticipating the disaster but then feeling the relief when it's miraculously avoided at the last minute. That's called tension and then catharsis, and scriptwriters use it all the time to hook in the audience. You gotta love movie miracles, right?" She finished brightly.
"Well it must be working a movie miracle if it got you to come back for the sequel." Steve teased her. "Especially since I can't see how that premise even
allows for one."
"Oh yeah, it's good odds that we're about to suffer through the adventures of
'Typecast 2: The Search For More Money'." Courtney laughed softly. "But hey, if this turns out to be a 'we hacked out a sloppy sequel just to chase more box office' thing then at least we'll probably have watched a comedy."
"You know, that was how a lot of the B-movies back when I was a kid made money." Steve agreed. "If you didn't have the time or the talent to be good, then at least be so
wildly bad that people still paid to point and laugh."
"I guess Hollywood's Hollywood, any time and any universe." Courtney matched his grin. "Hey, did you get any snacks besides popcorn?"
"Didn't recognize the names, so I grabbed a random selection." Steve searched quickly through the several packets of candy he'd picked up. "Do you like… 'Sour Patch Kids'?"
"I fuckin'
love Sour Patch Kids." Courtney gently took the packet from Steve's hand and opened it, and then handed him the first piece.
* * * * *
Author's Note: Shroud foreshadowing! Yay!
I had planned to drag out the misunderstanding mambo between our two crazy kids for a while… and then the characters wrote themselves and got to the confession of feels in just two chapters. This story has gone
epically off from what the original draft version was, but as long as it can still continue to help write itself for me then I'm still good with it.
Oh well, at least they're still in 'let's take this one date at a time' mode instead of leaping straight to endgame. I need
some kind of arc here, after all, not just a short flat line. And Courtney still hasn't come clean with all her secrets to Cap… you can probably spot the subtle moments where she pulls back, before reaching out again.
Because this is why Courtney is so much milder around Cap than she was around Robert at this same point in canon, even if she's not consciously aware of why yet. In the game there's so much edgy intensity with almost every interaction Courtney has with Robert before episode 7 because until Courtney can confess her guilt to Robert – until she can finally come clean and admit the truth – she
needs her defensive walls up in order to be near him at all, and her defensive walls are made out of acid, inappropriate jokes, and cussing. Paradoxically, Visi's slightly increased pace of cussing from her recent low spike means she's relaxing more around Steve, so maybe it's more of a horseshoe than a graph. But still.
Anyway, Courtney's guilt over the almost-death of Mecha Man is obviously not a bar to her interacting with Cap… in fact, being near Cap, being in the moment with him, is her
respite from that guilt. Her only temporary respite, of course, because she still has to ultimately go back to work in the morning. So it's still an obstacle in her and Cap's relationship as well… just a more subtle and longer-term one. But hey, that's why this is a story, not a snapshot.
And I really do believe Courtney would have accepted Skinny Steve, whether as a girl of the same age in the same neighborhood or the woman she is now looking back on Steve as he was then. Because she has a valid point; she'd have been in no position to judge Skinny Steve's asthma and physical limitations, she shares some of them. And she is someone who isn't looking for just a pretty face, she's looking for a nice guy who genuinely believes in her and can help her believe she can be better, which, uh,
Steve Rogers.
And yes, that
is four of the classic Serpent Society members from the Captain America comics. When I needed a quirky squad of villains in a hurry I decided to indulge myself with a tiny in-joke. And yes, the 'Endgame' reference is deliberate, you know me.
Finally, can somebody tell me how Sonar suddenly became episode MVP? Because even I don't know how! Dude hasn't even been bumping cocaine recently, he's getting validated and high on life!
