when will you make a grave? for i will be home then

[pursuitofcappiness]

who Steve, you!
what Homecoming
when Early morning, day 48
where Edge of the forest

He wakes up in the forest and he doesn't know where he is. But he knows his best bet's to walk east. He doesn't remember these trees, but he knows what time it is, looks for the sun creeping up over the horizon, knows where he's going.

He doesn't feel drugged like he assumes he'd be, and he doesn't feel injured. He just feels confused, like he doesn't know where he just was or what day it is. How did he fall asleep out here?

If he looks at his reflection, he might not recognize it. His hair is unkempt, his eyes are slightly sunken, and he has the light beginnings of a beard. The only thing familiar would be the sharpness of his stare.

As soon as he sees the end of the trees, he knows where he is. This place felt like a dream, and not a particularly good one. Now he's back in it.

Comments

[manofiron]

He doesn’t need another tiger. Especially so soon after having acquired the first. But now that people are talking about hunting, he thinks maybe he should keep an eye on the local tiger population, make sure they’re not depleted on the off-chance that this plan of his actually works and they need more of them. Not what the greatest technological genius – after Howard Stark – in the world should really be spending his time on, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

Plus, it helps to keep an eye on the town. Unlike so many of the others who seem to be growing complacent in their lives in the town, Tony hasn’t and he still wants to go home. And he wants to find Steve. Which is what his thoughts inevitably turn to as he walks along the edge of the forest, scouting for signs of anything that could help him.

When movement catches his eye, he almost ignores it as his imagination. Until some sixth sense urges him to turn his head. He comes to an abrupt halt, eyes narrowing at the sight of the man walking toward him. It can’t be. It can’t be.

It better fucking well be.

“Steve?”

[pursuitofcappiness]

"Tony?" This better not be some sort of hallucination, and it better not be Howard with Tony's face, because that's the last memory he has of Tony and that's unacceptable. He doesn't want to be here, but a little part of him is so very happy that he's not all alone. That part of him carries him forward, that part of him rests a hand on Tony's shoulder when he gets near and grins at him in relief.

"Thank goodness you're here. Did you wake up outside too?" Because he can't imagine why else Tony would be out here this early. Something is weirdly wrong about this, but Steve can't put his finger on it. Everything just feels off, but then again, he's trusted and mistrusted himself in the wrong ways more than once since coming here.

[manofiron]

“Did—What?” Tony blinks at him in confusion, the relief at feeling the weight of his hand – he’s real, Tony’s not hallucinating, Steve is really there – suddenly drowned by a wash of unease.

“No, I…” Half turning, he starts to point back toward the house. And just like that, he remembers the first time he found Steve here. How everyone said he’d been there before but he couldn’t remember.

Slowly, he turns back to face him, and very carefully, without the slightest inflection in his voice, asks, “You don’t remember this, do you?”

[pursuitofcappiness]

He's trying to parse what Tony's asking him, and then realizes what he's trying to say. "No, of course I remember. I remember that ugly comfortable chair, and..." He's trying only to recount happy memories, so this is a short list. "--And we're going hunting."

Wow, that was even worse than anticipated.

"You're not seeing computers, are you?" he asks, because if he's not, that's a good chance they made it through this and they should get going before the next big thing sets in. He falters, feels like he's lost his footing a little bit. He pauses. "What... happened?"

[manofiron]

“What? No, that was…”

Seeing computers? Tony lifts a hand and scrubs at his face, trying to make sense of this. Steve remembers the town. He remembers the goddamn chair. But he doesn’t remember that he’s been missing for almost two weeks?

“You’ve been missing for nearly two weeks.” It comes out sharper than Tony intends, and without actually thinking about it, he steps forward and grabs a fistful of Steve’s shirt. He can’t shake Captain America, Steve’s too strong for that, but damned if he doesn’t want to try. Just shake him until he gets answers to the myriad questions he has about where he’s been and who took him.

Low and quiet, he asks in a hiss, “Where have you been?”

[pursuitofcappiness]

Steve wants to slap Tony's hands away again as soon as he takes on that tone of voice, but he knows that won't do anybody any good and he remembers those open wounds much clearer than he should. "I don't know," he answers, more defiantly than he means.

He frowns, softly excuses himself from Tony's physical vicinity, and holds his head in his hand. And then it slides down his face, which oddly, is the first time he's conscious of having facial hair. He basically grabs his face, like he doesn't believe it. "I've really been gone for two weeks?" he asks, eyes slightly wide in what can only be panic. Wakes up somewhere, doesn't know how he got there, everything feels weird...

Yeah, that's starting to be the least welcome familiar feeling Steve's ever had.

[manofiron]

And now they’re back to this again. Tony can hear it in Steve’s voice, see in it the way he moves away from him, and just for an instant, it makes him angry. How many hours did he spend searching for him? How many times did he risk his life going into the woods and everywhere else trying to find even a scrap of a hint as to where he’d gone and who took him? And for what? To be pushed aside because he wasn’t Howard?

Something cold and snide is hovering on the tip of his tongue, but through some herculean force of will, he bites it back. Shoving his hands into his jacket pockets, Tony helps Steve out by taking a few steps of his own away from him.

“Yeah.” It’s brusque, cold and businesslike. “Two weeks. Couple people died. Had a funeral. Just another day in the life.” Turning, he starts walking away. “Stop in and see Sharon when you have the time. She can fill you in.”

[pursuitofcappiness]

Great, he tried to avoid the inevitable. "Who died?" he asks, even though it's not a good question to ask right now, but if Tony's going to throw it in his face then he's sure as hell not going to shove it in Sharon's. Tony might have a great city walk, but Steve's able to keep up with him pretty easily. "Let's go home. Let's talk this over."

He knows he shouldn't be, but he's scared. He's powerless. This being gone for two weeks, that's just the cape telling him that he's just a pawn. And yes, his feelings are insignificant next to deaths, especially multiple deaths, but they should have prevented those. He should have been here.

That steadily makes him lose hope, and that's not a good place to be. He knows they have to stick together. No matter how unfair he thinks this situation is, he has to suck it up, tread on egg shells, and be not a rock but a mountain. He tries a gentler approach, lightly taking Tony by the arm. "Please," he says, more confused than desperate, but he's starting to look like he did when everything was new. "I need your help."

[manofiron]

Tony’s life has been an emotional rollercoaster – largely self-inflicted – since Steve’s disappearance. He hasn’t slept much. He hasn’t eaten much. The only thing he’s gotten much of, besides exercise, is alcohol, and it’s doing nothing for his emotional stability. The guilt at somehow losing Steve to whoever’s abducted them in the first place has been eating him alive and the last thing he needs right now is another round of the neverending Rogers-Stark battle.

That’s what he tries to go. And that’s why he grits his teeth on a snarl when Steve catches up to him. He wants to find himself someone who actually can help him, someone he wants to deal with. He can’t do that if Steve persists in following him. Taking a deep breath, he lets it out, counts to ten, and tries not to exacerbate an already touchy situation.

Steve’s likely been through hell. It won’t kill him to stop thinking about himself for once and show a little compassion.

“I’m trying. I tried.” He doesn’t brush him off, just glances up at him from the corner of his eye. “Since you disappeared, I’ve been looking. Every day. I didn’t get anywhere. There wasn’t any sign of you, but I didn’t stop. And I didn’t let anyone take your room either, because I knew you’d need it when you came back.”

[pursuitofcappiness]

Steve has no idea what he's been through. He looks fine, physically, packaged up and ready-to-go, just like his first day out of the factory. "Thank you," he says, with an odd sort of finality to his tone.

There's a short pause. "Look, why don't we go home? We've still got food, right? I'll make us something to eat," he says, because if Tony's been out looking then he's kept Steve's bed open and his own as well. If there was one thing Steve would change about Tony, it'd be his unwillingness to take care of himself.

He's counted to ten, he's calmed down, and he thinks he can handle this. "What were you plans today?" he asks, because if Steve's been gone for two weeks, then Tony needs to stay at home and let someone else worry for a day.

[manofiron]

“There is food, yes. A few days ago, our gracious hosts dropped food into the fishbowl for us. Nothing fresh, that we’ve still got to find for ourselves, but packaged things, dry goods, cans, that we’ve got.”

He takes a moment to wish that this wasn’t so hard. That they could just talk and plan and be normal people without all the complicated shit, but Tony doesn’t know how to do that, and even if he recognizes that there are stupid problems between them, he doesn’t know how to navigate around them. Where’s Pepper when he needs her? Or JARVIS? They might be able to sort him out.

“Yeah, okay.” He lets out a breath, gives himself a mental shake, and nods. “Sure. Food. No Beanie Weenies, though. Everyone keeps trying to pawn them off on people and I’m tired of them. And for the record, I’m not doing anything today. Or at least, I wasn’t.”

With Steve back, there’s no need to search for him, and that cuts Tony’s workload – or what passes for it these days – considerably in half.

[pursuitofcappiness]

"Oh. Good." He has no idea what beanie weenies are, but he thinks it's probably what it sounds like, and hot dogs being skinless was like, invented in Steve's childhood. He remembers sheep intestine casing, okay. Boy thinks powdered milk is a good idea, so there is absolutely nothing bad with more food, even if it's processed to hell. Steve's had enough experience trying to make canned tuna taste fresh.

"I'll eat the beanie weenies. I'll make you something else." He'll be delighted to know that they are, in fact, a very familiar frank and beans product. He'll be even more delighted to know nobody wants it, because he'll have plenty to eat and not feel guilty. He does, however, think they need to start planting some seeds and dedicating some land to a fresh garden. Frozen green beans will last from the time they're plucked through to February. "Do we have powdered eggs?"

[manofiron]

“Sorry, what?”

When they get back home, if he and Steve are still speaking to one another by the time all of this is over, he’s going to do an extensive study of the types of food available in the 40s. Because he’s starting to think that there wasn’t much, and that the food that was available was powdered. Powdered milk, powdered eggs, powdered chicken, powdered beans, hell, there was probably even powdered water.

“Why was everything powdered? Were you having a water shortage or what?”

It's not at all on topic with Steve's arrival, but maybe that's for the best.

[greenisnteasy]

Bruce likes to walk or jog once he gets out of bed. It's good for the health routine and clears his head, and it's a nice break from yoga sometimes when he yogas himself out. Anyway, it's hard to yoga anything when there's a tiger hanging around his house; he's trying to avoid it to avoid any mishaps that might come from him being attacked.

He sees someone stumbling out of the woods, and given the height and general physique, it's not hard to guess who it is. This isn't the first time Steve's disappeared and come back for him, and it's also definitely not the first time Bruce has experienced someone coming out of the woods after a disappearance. Slowing to a stop, he sets his hands on his hips and then nods.

"Hey, Steve. Nice beard."

[pursuitofcappiness]

For some reason, Steve's first instinct is to look behind him, as if there is some manner of creature called a beard. He has never had one, and he recalls last seeing Bruce "yesterday," when he decidedly did not have one. So when what's happening catches up to him 1/6th of a second later, he pauses in his tracks. "How long was I gone?" he asks nervously, like he's about to step on a landmine of sorts.

On the one hand, Bruce is totally calm about this, so it can't have been long, right? Right?

[greenisnteasy]

There are a variety of reasons Bruce is fairly calm. People disappear frequently is one; that people reappear occasionally is another, and he's been witness to a few of those, as well as to his own reappearance after having gone missing. What's the point in getting worked up over something that's neither a positive nor a negative? Showing back up in this town after Bruce has learned it's possible to go home is hardly a positive. It's merely less horrible than staying a test subject.

"About ten days." He's casual about it. It's just the state of affairs. He approaches Steve, holding his hand out. "C'mon, I'll help you back home. Do you remember anything about the time you were gone?"

[pursuitofcappiness]

He shakes his head, rather dumbly. "Ten days?" he asks, not sure whether to be impressed he's only been gone that long or to feel really bad that he doesn't remember the last ten days at all. He's sure he hasn't been out of it. "I... what if they did something to me?"

There's no way they just let him lay around sleeping for that long. He can't remember a thing, not one single thing. It's unnerving, and he catches himself looking off, distracted, trying so hard to remember something he'd probably rather forget. "If they gave me something to forget, it's probably still in my system. Think you could find it?"

[greenisnteasy]

Oh, Steve. Bruce doesn't say anything verbally, but his expression might let it show. He firmly believes Steve was off being a lab rat for these people for the past ten days, unless he's been home like Galen was, but the dazedness is making him lean toward science experiment.

"Sure. Come on, let's go to the clinic. I can check you out and you can take it easy." He gestures and then waits for Steve to start moving first. He'll help guide him if he needs it.

"I'm guessing you don't remember anything?"

[pursuitofcappiness]

"Not a thing," he replies. But he heads off towards the clinic, trying to look strong like there is absolutely nothing wrong. That's not working out so well for him. He remembers what Bruce said, that Steve's medical inventory wasn't necessary because if something happened to him, they were all screwed. Well, shit.

He's not a stranger to being trapped in his own body, but that doesn't mean he's any more used to this than he should be. He is lucky; this isn't unit 731 and this isn't Mengele or anything. The weirdest experiment that ever happened to him? The US Government was in charge of that. It doesn't stop him from feeling like his body's been invaded, violated, by faceless and nameless strangers he can't remember.

"Last thing I remember's wanting to go hunting, and then I thought I saw my mother." He looks down, at the ground, as he walks.

[greenisnteasy]

Bruce slides his hands into his pockets, though he's ready to grab Steve to support him if he needs help, though just feeling that way is unsettling. If something's rattling around in Steve's blood and throwing him off base, then Bruce is pretty worried, yeah, though it wouldn't surprise him anymore, not after some of the things he's seen.

"Hunting? Where were you, though? Were you here?" The last time Steve disappeared, he came back without any of his memories, though he'd turned up like other new arrivals did. He's suspecting that this Steve is the last Steve, but who knows?

[pursuitofcappiness]

"Yes," he responds decidedly. "I was here. I was having some bad hallucinations, and then that morning I decided we should go hunting to stock up some meat. I wanted to organize a trip, but I had to delay it because of the hallucinating... I went to sleep last night-- that night-- ten days ago-- and I woke up in there."

He racks through his brain again, trying to find even a smidgen of a clue of where he's been. "Can memory even be erased like that?" he asks. It's like they cut him open and excised the last ten days straight out of his head.

[greenisnteasy]

Bruce looks over at him and tries not to look as if he's pitying him, but he is.

"Yeah, Steve. Especially if they were keeping you under some kind of a sedation, which they probably were -- that's just a guess of mine -- then you wouldn't be able to remember being anywhere at all." Plus he's seen what these people can do; something far worse could've happened to Steve, which is another reason why it's a good idea to get a look at what might be floating around in his system.

"Don't worry about it too much. It's over now; you're back. Thinking about what might've happened's only going to drive you nuts."

[pursuitofcappiness]

He doesn't say it already is. "I know. It's the shock," he replies. "It'll wear off." He opens the door to the clinic for Bruce, wishing he could erase from his mind having to see the look Bruce just gave him. This is basically a common occurrence now, especially to Steve. Doesn't mean he should just take it, but there's nothing much he can do.

He's keenly aware that he's never had to be in here before, and he doesn't know what to do. It smells a little like a hospital, and that leaves a kind of uncomfortable feeling in his stomach. He hasn't had to be in one of these for awhile. It's bringing up a lot of mixed memories. "How long did this all take you to put together?"

[greenisnteasy]

"What, the clinic?" He steps inside and smiles at Steve for holding the door for him before he goes to fix Steve a glass of water. He needs to do tests and things, it's true, but he'd like for Steve to sit and be in the world for like twenty seconds before he starts poking at him with needles. Plus he's not entirely sure what he does and doesn't remember from being there.

"I've been putting it together slowly since I've been here. There was a supply pile recently and I grabbed some medical supplies, and luckily avoided having my head eaten by a spider. Sit down." He hands Steve the glass of water.

"Are you hungry? I can make you a bowl of soup."

[pursuitofcappiness]

He shakes his head no. "Not hungry," he confirms, although now that he's conscious of it, there's a sort of strange gnawing like he's on the verge of hunger, like he'd been fed recently. They must have fed him, these last ten days. He wonders what it was, but he doesn't want to ask because he doesn't think Bruce is going to want to pump his stomach and look through the contents. They're not that desperate for information, right? Anyway, he'd rather get this over with, so they can go back to being friends instead of doctor and patient.

"The spiders came back?" he asks instead, because of course they'd send those along with supply packages. Seriously, they should at least tell them what kind of experiment they all didn't sign up for.