#but this is what i got when reading the script (+ steve barton was my first raoul)
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i need to talk about this beacuse i've been a poto fan since 2021 and i just have to say... i truly don't think raoul was trying to gaslight christine AT ALL in the rooftop.
the goal of his character is to protect everyone and make sure everything is ok at the opera. including christine.
one of his lines in "why have you brought me here/raoul i've seen him" is: "my god who is this man?"
of course he knows there's someone who's killing people. he just wants to make sure christine knows that it's not a supernatural being, because she is having a mental breakdown and because, at this point of the story, raoul thinks that if the murderer is only a man then he can be defeated and is not as dangerous as a literal monster (that's a reason why he tells christine "you said yourself he was nothing but a man... YET while he lives, he will haunt us till we're dead".)
he even checks to see what is happening when she asks "what was that?". he does care. that's why he's telling her all this. he wants to make her feel safe and calm.
while erik is blinded by the dark he has lived in his entire life, raoul is, at the same time, blinded by the light and his position. he is naïve (and maybe a bit dumb) but he has a heart of gold. he only wishes good for everyone (even for erik in some way. i mean, notice how he gives him advice. and, also, him and christine met because he went to fetch her scarf!! this dude wants to help others!!). and it seems to be hard for him to accept that not the entire world will be good and that not everything will always go as he wants it to be.
he has blind optimism.
and his journey is to see life and the world as it is. it's personal growth. it's letting go of the chains that held you down. and that is also christine's journey.
they both leave their caves and learn about life together.
he wants to do everything for everyone and he may be stubborn as hell, but he would DIE for others (especially for christine). he needs to be the hero, it's not until the end when he becomes the victim that he realizes that the world is more than what he'd always known. and now he has seen the good and the bad. and the middle of both. and he can carry on.
#raoul de chagny#raoulstine#r/c#i'm insane about him#alsoo this is specifically about the musical!!#i guess it also depends on who portrays him#but this is what i got when reading the script (+ steve barton was my first raoul)
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Anonymous request: Imagine being Clint Barton’s trans son
Sometimes it was hard to have an Avenger for a dad. For once, that wasn’t actually the hardest part. Him being away a lot had actually made part of this easier. It gave you more time to plan and prepare.
You thought about a letter, an email, a text. Ultimately you decided against them all though. You wanted to tell him face to face. You still wrote out a lot of what you wanted to say but you didn’t want to be reading off a script when you talked to him either.
When he got back from the latest mission, he and Natasha came back to the house. It had been an easy one they said, by Avengers standards of course. Once you were sure that everyone was safe and still as mentally stable as they had been when they left, you asked to pull your dad aside for a minute.
“What’s going on kid?” He asked. He could tell you were nervous, you were fidgety and looked from him and then away and back several times.
“Dad there’s something I need to tell you. About me.”
“Are you okay? Has someone-” His mind raced to a hundred bad things that could be going on before you cut him off.
“I’m fine. I’m just, I’m just not who you always thought I was.”
Was it bad that his first thought was that you were secretly an Asgardian sent to Earth as a baby or something like that?
You read the confusion on his face and quickly continued speaking.
“Dad I’m transgender. I’m a boy. And I want you to call me [Y/N] and your son and a brother and-”
This time you were the one cut off as your dad pulled you into a hug. You wrapped your arms tightly around him and even though you were happy and relieved, you were fighting back tears.
“Son, daughter, anything else. it doesn’t matter buddy. I love you.”
“Thanks dad.” He could here that you were choked up and held you a little tighter.
“Should we go tell your Aunt Nat while she’s here, or do you want to wait?”
“We can tell her now.” You said.
Your dad let you drop the hug first and stepped back when you let him go.
“Are you okay?” He noticed your eyes were watery but he didn’t want to press you.
“Yeah, I’m good. Happy.”
He put a hand on your shoulder and guided you back out to the porch where Nat had gone to wait for the two of you so she wouldn’t accidentally overhear anything.
“Aunt Nat?”
“You both good?” She asked, picking up that both of you had been near tears moments ago.
“Yeah we’re good. Aunt Nat, I’m trans. Could you call me [Y/N]?”
Natasha smiled, then put on a fake frown.
“Clint you’re subtracting from my niece tally.”
Your dad smiled and you laughed.
“Sorry to disappoint.” You smiled.
“I guess I can live with it.” She sighed, winking at you.
With those two out of the way, telling the rest of the Avengers was easy. Your dad brought you to the compound and helped you tell everyone and educate them. Thor needed the most help with terminology but everyone was very supportive. Tony immediately had Jarvis update your records and pronouns in the system.
Everyone was lovely about it, truly.
But your dad was on a whole other level, rivaled possibly only by Natasha. Around the house, you got a Nerf gun to correct people if they misgendered or dead-named you. The idea caught on and soon all the Avengers found themselves shot with little darts if they got it wrong. Everyone became remarkably fast learners.
Your dad doesn’t do much press, not like Steve or Tony, but it makes you smile every time he talks proudly about his son.
He made arrows with trans colors on them that spew colored smoke and disorient a person. You helped him design them after all the gender reveal party fails you saw online.
He’s not so good at dealing with all the bureaucratic nonsense that is the American healthcare system, but it’s impressive what doors being an Avenger opens. If/when you decided you want to pursue medical transition, he’s very supportive. Hormones, surgery, he’s got your back through it all.
The first year after you came out, you asked him to take you to pride. You ended up getting a little more than you asked for.
It started out just the two of you. You walked around, saw the booths. Your dad was happy to see you happy. You got some merch, and your dad bought himself some stuff as well. He asked you questions, you guys talked to people. It was nice, and pretty low-key all things considered.
After some time wandering, you saw a collection of familiar faces approaching.
“I hope you don’t mind, I invited them to join us.” Them of course meant the rest of the Avengers, some of whom stuck out more than others. They all wore varying degrees of pride gear, from Natasha who wore a black shirt with an abstract design in trans colors, to Tony who had gone full rainbow.
The now large group of you walked through the festival together, with everyone talking and laughing. Some asked you questions about words or flags or memes that were unfamiliar. Thor had a lot of questions about how he had become a lesbian icon and what his duties entailed.
At the end of the day, you all went your separate ways.
“Was that good?” Your dad asked as he drove you both home.
“Yeah it was. Thank you for taking me, and for coming, and for inviting them. It was fun.”
“I don’t think I’ve actually said it to you yet, but I’m proud of you. Not just for this, because I know coming out and that is hard. But I’m proud of you. My son. I’m proud of the man you’re growing into.”
You smiled. You wished your dad could be around more, selfishly, but more than that, you were proud of what he did and who he was. You wanted to be like him in so many ways.
“Thanks dad. I love you.”
#clint barton imagine#avengers imagine#x male reader#x male!reader#male reader#male!reader#x trans reader#x trans!reader#x trans male reader#x son reader#x son!reader#son reader#clint barton x son!reader#clint barton x son reader#parent character#dad!clint#dad!character
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Now that I’ve had time to digest episode 1 of “Loki”, here is my attempt to answer some of the questions I keep seeing from people confused about the series:
1) “Why are there multiple Infinity Stones in the TVA’s possession?
As we see in the series, the TVA is responsible for eliminating any possible branches emerging from the Sacred Timeline. They find the variant, execute them, reset/delete the branching timeline, and confiscate any items that were part of the breach. So it’s highly likely that the Infinity Stones in Casey’s desk were collected from different points in history where a branching timeline was created.
For example, imagine a timeline where Clint Barton died and Natasha got the Soul Stone. Or a timeline where Peter Quill actually gave the Power Stone to Yondu at the end of Guardians of the Galaxy. Those alternate scenarios were most likely deleted by the TVA, with the variant Infinity Stones being collected by them as well.
And yes, based on this hypothetical scenario, the Natasha Romanoff who got the Soul Stone and the Peter Quill who gave Yondu the Power Stone were likely captured and executed by the TVA.
2) “Why are the TVA treating the Infinity Gems like paperweights?”
Well, lore-wise, the Infinity Stones don’t work outside of their respective universe and the TVA exists outside of the MCU. They’re a faction of the multiverse, meaning they don’t follow the rules of the individual universes. In addition, those variant stones are now part of timelines that no longer exist due to the TVA wiping them out. At this point, they literally are just normal rocks.
But why the lack of reverence? Shouldn’t the TVA be in awe of these stones? Well...no. This is where the MCU enters the “Cosmic Marvel” territory since the TVA is part of the bigger multiverse. You’re gonna have to expand your thinking when it comes to this since we’re not just talking about normal superheroes anymore. The TVA literally controls the flow of time (and, by extension, the direction of the entire MCU), so the Infinity Gems are actually beneath them in terms of power. For those who don’t read the comics, get ready for a wild ride because it looks like “Loki” is going to explore some of the more grander aspects of Cosmic Marvel, which is perfect timing for the Eternals movie.
Examples of what I mean when I say the grander aspects of Cosmic Marvel: The Beyonder, the One Above All, the Living Tribunal, Eternity, Infinity.
3) “Why didn’t the TVA give their Infinity Gems to the Avengers? That could’ve been helpful against Thanos.”
The TVA doesn’t actually exist in the Sacred Timeline. They’re literally just time police, making sure that the flow of time goes smoothly. If the timeline says that the TVA doesn’t get involved, then they’re not going to get involved.
But isn’t that cruel? They just let Thanos go on a rampage, resulting in the deaths of several beloved characters.
Well...yes. That’s how beholden to the Sacred Timeline they are. And to make things even crueler, the TVA doesn’t have an incentive to help the Marvel heroes. I mean, why should they? They’re a part of the bigger multiverse, so an event like Infinity War and Endgame means nothing to them. Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Vision, and Natasha Romanoff are just characters to them, acting out a script that they aren’t even aware of.
To grasp this concept, think of the TVA as Marvel Studios themselves. They’re the ones writing the conflicts and tragedies that happen to our main heroes.
4) “Why didn’t the TVA intervene when the Avengers traveled back in time? Isn’t that a time violation?”
Not gonna lie, this kinda fucked me up as well. But based on what Ravonna Renslayer said, the Avengers’ trips to the past were already part of the Sacred Timeline. Those weren’t violations, those were events that were already written into the main timeline.
I know, that sounds crazy. But think about it. Doctor Strange saw the future where they won against Thanos and in that future, he saw the Avengers developing time travel and collecting the Infinity Stones. So it’s not hard to imagine that the future that Strange saw was the pathway written into the Sacred Timeline. The futures where the Avengers lost are then the branching timelines that would eventually be deleted by the TVA.
So...yeah. Basically, free will doesn’t exist in the MCU. The Avengers didn’t break the timeline, they were just following the script subconsciously given to them by the multiverse. How’s that for an existential crisis?
#marvel#MCU#loki#loki spoilers#loki speculation#loki tv show#loki laufeyson#avengers endgame#the avengers#avengers#avengers infinity war#time variance authority#natasha romanoff#clint barton#tony stark#steve rogers#doctor strange#peter quill#yondu udonta#guardians of the galaxy#cosmic marvel#thanos#marvel studios
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Trivia Tuesday
Creators: give a “behind the scenes” look at one of your works. This could be things that got removed or changed, the origins of ideas/details, whatever you like!
(Thanks @ao3commentoftheday for the header!)
-+-
I haven’t done one of these in a while. After having a pretty deep Ignition chat with @unlimitedhappylife last night, I thought it might be fun to share some insight.
One thing, if you read with a magnifying glass, you’ll notice in Ignition is that it has layers. Layers on layers on layers. I also love playing with parallels. One of my favorite examples is the dynamic between Steve and Darcy. Prepare for a long post below of an author’s ramblings.
A big theme in this story is sacrifice. In the start of Ignition we see it play out where Steve is willing to put Darcy at risk by taking her on a secret mission in order to bring back the TeleThor. When they get back to the safe house, successful but with a close call, Thor and Steve have a big argument over it because to Thor, the idea that Steve was so willing to put Darcy, who is infinitely precious to him, in danger is enraging. In their argument, we see Steve state that it was Darcy’s ultimate choice to take the risk and that she has that right.
And Thor struggles with that reality because he loves Darcy like a little sister—she is all he has left.
Later, after Thanos threw down the ultimatum to the Avengers demanding they turn themselves in or he starts killing 50 random citizens a day, we see Steve getting ready to turn himself in to Thanos. He’s ready to sacrifice himself so that 50 citizens can go free because one life for 50 is worth it to him. And we see Darcy have a major issue with that (basically having a similar stance as Thor in the first argument over the idea of sacrifice).
“And if I willingly choose to sit back and let fifty people—fifty lives—be snuffed out, what will my life be worth then?” Steve’s voice was hard and unyielding. “It’s a selfish thing to want to trade fifty innocents for our lives.”
“Says the man who wouldn’t be left behind to drown in the grief,” she snapped, slamming down her mug.
And a little later in their argument...
“Steve, you’re asking me to do the very thing you are unwilling to do: knowingly stand back and let a sacrifice happen. If we’re—you said we’re friends, right?”
He gave her a careful nod, like he was waiting for the trap, and Darcy pressed on.
“Then stop asking me to be okay with losing you.”
And then, later on when the Soul Stone comes into play, I flip the script. Steve gets to experience firsthand what Darcy felt in that kitchen—what it’s like for someone he cares about to decide to put their life at risk.
And suddenly, Steve is no longer okay with the idea. It makes you wonder if the Steve we see later in Ignition would have been as open to the idea of sneaking Darcy out on a secret mission as the earlier Steve was.
Also, everyone loves to get pissed at Clint and I get it, he’s a bit of a dick. But I wanted to write Endgame Clint (minus the Murder spree) and have him be an alternative view on things. And, whether we like him or not, he speaks some pretty hard truth. He calls Steve out on his shit (in an asshole kind of way lol).
“Darcy.”
Clint slid a dangerous look at Steve who was leaning forward trying to get her attention, his hand closed in a tight fist. The archer lifted one cool brow, his voice turning mean. “Yeah, you’re going to get over that coddling shit real fast, Cap. We’ve all got tough decisions to make and a part to play. We’ve known since the moment Loki brought back the stone that there would be a sacrifice and—”
“—and it’s not you being ripped open by an infinity stone every time you touch it.” Steve bit out with real venom, his eyes flashing.
“Maybe if you weren’t just interested in getting your dick wet—”
Darcy flinched, shame washing over her, turning her face a bright red.
And a few paragraphs later...
Steve’s jaw ticked. “I don’t want us to fight, we’ve got a big enough enemy already. We don’t need to add more amongst ourselves. That being said, you do seem awful eager to spill blood that isn’t your own, Barton. That’s where I have my problem,” Steve tried, his tone less defensive.
Clint snorted humorlessly, still clearly riled up. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse, barely more than a rasp, like he had screamed it all out.
“That’s easy for you to say. Didn’t you sneak her off for a fucking mission back at the safehouse? What, now suddenly things are different—you care?”
Bottom line: I love gray areas. I love decisions that aren’t black and white, things that make you think.
Darcy is their only hope at that time of bringing back half the universe. One life for half the universe, is it worth it? Clint doesn’t know Darcy like Steve or Thor do, to him, she is the key to bringing back those he loves and so in his mind, it’s worth it.
Steve had this same conversation with Vision in Infinity War and remember, Vision was okay with sacrifice but Wanda was not (again, it’s different when the sacrifice is not yourself but someone you love).
Anyway, congrats if you read all of that. Welcome to how fucking complicated the storylines and characterizations are in my head. It’s a hot mess most of the time, but I also love this kind of shit.
If this is something folks like, I’d be happy to share any other sort of behind the scenes insights to the story or characters.
Annnnd I’m done 😂
#ignition talk#steve rogers#darcy lewis#clint barton#Thor#characterization#parallels#my writing process#behind the scenes#ao3#trivia tuesday#sacrfice#writing themes#did this make any sense#probably not#beware#rev is getting philosophical today
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Siren
pairing: loki x reader
warning: reader faints? idk if that’s a warning but im putting it as one incase
word count: 1.8k
a/n: this has been sitting in my revised for a while and since we’re quarantined, i said fuck it and finished it. anyway, hope you like it and tell me if y’all want a part 2!
The elevator chimed and opened the elevator doors revealing Thor and Loki. Steve gets up from the couch to greet them.
“JARVIS, tell Y/N that Thor is here,” Steve tells JARVIS then walks to the kitchen to get some breakfast with Natasha.
-
You were changing since you had gotten out of the shower when JARVIS told you that Thor had arrived. “Thank you JARVIS!” You exclaimed. You finished getting dressed then rushed downstairs to see your close friend, Thor.
Once you finally reached the living room area and made eye contact with Thor. You sprinted to him and gave him a giant hug causing him to engulf you.
“I’ve missed you!” You exclaimed into his shoulder.
“I have missed you too little one.” Thor chuckles while hugging you harder, restricting your breathing.
“Thor... need to... breathe..” You say between breaths finally getting him to put you down.
“Sorry about that.” Thor winced while gesturing your attention towards Loki.
When Loki’s eyes met yours, he gently took your hand in his and kissed the back of your hand, your face growing hot from his actions. “Loki. It’s my pleasure to meet you, love.”
The moment he greets you, you start to get dizzy and your body goes limp. When he started to stand upright, you started to lose balance provoking Loki to intercept you before your body clashed with the floor.
“Brother, what did you do to Lady Y/n?” Thor’s voice boomed, causing Nat and Steve to shoot up from the table.
“What happened?” Natasha queried while dashing out of the kitchen with Steve right behind her.
“JARVIS. Get Tony up here. Now.” Steve ordered going into captain mode.
“Yes, Captain.”
“Loki. What happened?” Steve questions while trying to keep a level head, throwing daggers with his eyes at the god.
“What did you need Capsicle?” Tony asks while coming up the stairs nonchalantly until he sees you in Loki’s arms.
Loki shook his head slightly looking up to Thor and the others with worry in his eyes, “I didn’t do anything, I was merely introducing myself.”
“This is no time for one of your tricks, Reindeer Games. Thor get Y/N from Loki, let’s get her/him to the med bay. JARVIS, call Dr. Banner and tell him that it’s urgent.” Tony demanded.
“Calling Dr. Banner,” JARVIS replied while Thor picked you up bridal style bringing you to the med bay with Tony.
Tony and Thor got to the med bay laying you on one of the medical beds while waiting for Banner to get there.
“I got your call. I came as fast as I could,” Dr. Banner stated lightly panting. “What happened with Y/N?” He questioned, furrowing his eyebrows while walking over towards you, starting to examine you.
“Loki told Y/N that it was nice to meet her/him and then she/he... collapsed,” Tony explained to Bruce, observing his facial expression while he studied you, trying to find out what was wrong.
“That’s unusual. Has Y/N been getting lightheaded lately? Has she/he been drinking enough water?” Bruce questioned Tony and Thor while walking them to the door.
“Uhh, I don’t recall Y/N getting lightheaded anytime recently,” Tony responded with uncertainty, hoping it was nothing too serious.
“I’m going to run a few more tests to make sure it’s nothing serious,” Bruce informed them then went back inside the room, shutting the door and the blinds behind him. Bruce went to work, trying every test that linked with symptoms of fainting.
While waiting for Bruce to be done with the testing, Tony and Thor waited outside the room.
-
Nat and Steve came down to the med bay around noon to see if you had woken up yet. When they got to the medical bay, they see Tony and Thor both hunched over sitting on the benches outside where Y/n was. Nat turns her head to glance at Steve then back at the boys, giving them a sympathetic smile. She walks over to where Tony is sitting and sits next to him. She lays her hand on his shoulder, rubbing his shoulder and back a bit.
"Where is my brother?” Thor asked, looking up at Steve and Nat.
“We thought it would be best to keep him in a cell until we sort this out,” Steve informs him on their decision.
All four of them turned to the door when they heard the door creak open. "I ran every test I could and everything came back negative, I honestly have no idea what’s wrong." Bruce started to explain but a coughing sound brought everyone’s attention inside the room.
“Wait here,” Bruce told them, walking back inside leaving the door open this time.
“What happened? Why am I in the medical bay?” You questioned scanning the room and sitting up in bed.
“You fainted and we brought you here,” Tony states ignoring what Bruce had told him and walked into the room, going to the left side of your bed opposite Bruce.
“Do you know why you collapsed like that?” Bruce inquired while the others decided to follow Tony into the room.
You begin to rake through your brain to find out any reason that had caused you to collapse. “Shit!" You realize what happened, making your eyes grow wider then swinging your legs over the side of the bed to leave.
“Woah, Woah, Woah. Where do you think you’re going?” Tony questions standing in front of you, blocking your way off the bed.
“To see Loki. I have to be certain about what this is.” You say trying to get off the bed but once your feet touch the ground, your knees gave in and you clutch onto the nearest thing to you, that being Tony.
“Y/N, you should sit down and rest. You just woke up from passing out.” Bruce informs you while Tony helps you back on the bed, giving you a stern look to not try to get up again.
“Wait. Did you just say you know what happened and why you collapsed?” Natasha announces seeming to be the only one to catch unto that part.
You shake your head slightly from side to side, giving a so-so expression on your face. “I have a theory but you won’t like it.” You say knowingly getting a look from them to continue. “Like a siren, we can lure men and women with our singing but if we hear our soulmates voice, we essentially pass out upon hearing it for the first time.” You explain while glancing at all them, watching their facial expressions change.
“So you’re telling us that Loki, is your ‘soulmate’?” Steve vocalized looking at you in confusion and disbelief, as if not hearing you correctly.
“Basically, yeah.” You say sheepishly. “Also, where is he?” You ask getting up off the bed and making sure you can walk without falling this time then starts toward the door.
“I can take you to him,” Natasha commented, giving you a helping hand and helped you out of the med bay with Thor trailing a little behind.
“I shall accompany you as well,” Thor claims, catching up to you and Nat in a few long strides.
-
Natasha led you and Thor to where Loki was being kept. Before arriving you ask Nat if Loki could leave the cell and live in one of the rooms Stark has available.
“I’ll have to ask Stark on that one,” Nat informed you, approaching the opening to where Loki was staying for the time being. “I’m going to go talk to Stark about getting him and Thor a room. Thor watches over them, please.” She insisted, leaving you with the two gods.
Once you made your way into Loki’s line of sight, you could already see that he was standing toward the middle of the cell. You could feel his intense gaze on you the entire time you walked into the room with Thor.
“May I have the pleasure of knowing what I'm here for exactly?” Loki inquired, finally speaking up after a bit, tilting his head slightly to the right watching you like a hawk.
You glanced up towards him to meet his intense stare but before you could think of something to say, Thor had beat you to it.
“Brother, do you know what a Siren is?” Thor questions Loki.
"Yes. Their mythical creatures said to be beautiful and have the power to put anyone in a trance by singing." He said as if he was reading off a script.
“You’re a siren.” He disclosed scanning your face, taking a few steps back to sit on one of the chairs in the little cell. “I'm your soulmate.” He observes you once he sat down. You nod your head slightly, giving him your answer.
You were about to say something when you heard Tony talking to Thor, telling him he could go if he wanted. You looked behind you to see Thor leaving and Tony and Clint coming further into the room, coming up on either side of you.
“This isn’t a good idea. Thor, I’m fine with but Loki? Really?” Clint whispers bitterly, keeping his eyes on Loki.
“We don’t have much choice. I hope you know that.” You tell them turning your head toward Hawkeye then back to Loki.
“What do you mean, ‘We don’t have much of a choice?’, we have plenty of choices and the best one is to send his ass back to Asgard.” Clint practically starts to seethe with anger.
“I’m right here.” Loki remarks throwing daggers at Clint. “Besides, you need me.” He states knowingly slinking back into the chair and continuing to examine your every move allowing him to take in your beauty once more.
Tony rolls his eyes at Loki’s response while Clint scoffed at him, “We don’t need anything from you.” Barton remarked.
“We do. Well, I do.” You correct yourself sheepishly removing your eyes from the god.
“Awe, come on Love. Don’t say that like it’s a bad thing.” Loki sneered, getting up from the chair and striding over to the glass edge.
“Y/N, what do you mean?” Tony asks, turning his head toward you and Clint, locking eyes with you, completely ignoring Loki all together.
“She needs me. If we were to get split up, she would die.” Loki explains for you, making you lose eye contact from Stark.
“Tell me that’s not true,” Clint pleads for reassurance having you turn your head to give him a weak smile.
“I wish I could but he speaks the truth this time.” You inform Stark and Clint, drooping your head lightly looking at the ground.
“Well now that's out of the way, could I get out of this cage?” Loki questions gesturing around himself.
Tony walks over the power grid grumpily and unlocks Loki’s door. He grabs the god's left forearm arm once he walks out of the cage. “If you ever dare hurt her in any way possible; emotionally, physically, or mentally, I will kill you.” He fumed, his eyes never wavering from Loki’s, making sure the god understood.
#marvel#loki#thor#iron man#loki x reader#captain america#black widow#hawkeye#banner#hulk#dr. banner#steve rogers#natasha romanoff#tony stark#clint barton#avengers
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Heart Too Cold, but Friends of Gold - Pt.9
The Flares
Pairing: Steve Rogers x reader Word count: 3090
Summary:
Avenger!reader AU. Part 2 of Melting Hearts series. Part 1 HERE.
In which Steve has too many redheads in his life and they are a lot to handle.
(Dealing with A:AOU, pt.2)
Warnings: swearing, light angst,... eh
Story Masterlist
────── ·❆· ──────
But did you see the flares in the sky?
Were you blinded by the light?
Did you feel the smoke in your eyes?
Did you, did you?
Did you see the sparks filled with hope?
You are not alone
'Cause someone's out there, sending out flares
(The Script – Flares)
The hallucination – the vision, perhaps – was a true eye-opened. Not because it was any news that Steve was the one to blame for your departure, no, but because actually seeing possibly a very true picture of what was happening to you was something that felt like a bullet to his brain. It was maddening and it should have made him spring into further action; yet, Steve couldn’t find himself having a strength to get mad. He was just too tired. Exhausted, with the weariness settled deep inside his bones.
And while he never had been the one to weep over the universe apparently hating him, he allowed himself to feel that way; especially when Maria Hill advised them to lay low and Clint took them into a safe house.
Correction: Clint took them home. Clint Barton had a home without anyone knowing (except Natasha, because Natasha knew everything and shared nothing), two healthy kids and a beautiful loving wife, living in a rural idyll. And once that information settled in Steve’s head, his heart broke on an entirely new level.
He could have a home. He could see himself having a home. He might not have before, not after coming out of the ice, not even long after actually. Not even the first time he had realized he was in love with you, no. It came with gradually and Steve hadn’t been quite aware of it; perhaps that was the actual truth that the vision created by Wanda Maximoff had revealed. With that hallucination, it had dawned to Steve that he had been ready to go home, for a while now; no matter what exactly home looked like, no matter how much fighting he would still be doing, for how many mission he would be going or if he would be able to reduce that.
He was ready to go home and he wished to go home, with you.
And in reality, it didn’t matter, because the most essential part of what he considered home was missing.
It was a relief when Fury showed up and helped them to figure out how to fight back – the battles they actually could fight. It reminded Steve that there were still battles worth fighting. It took his dark thoughts away, or at least it pushed them on the back burner for a while.
Then again, meeting Maximoff’s once more wasn’t helping. And the girl, suddenly so eager to fix things she had done wrong, reminded him of you too much. He shook off the thought when he went for what could be the final battle and tried his best to focus. No matter how insane the suddenly levitating city was.
And then they all knew it was the end.
“Stark will find a way to blow this rock,” Natasha stated rather calmly as they caught a moment to breathe in on the battlefield.
It was surprising how much faith she seemed to have into Tony with how he kept doing things behind their backs – then again, everyone seemed to be keeping secrets from another lately. But that wasn’t what he found outraging at her statement.
The city was flying and there was no way to save all the people before Stark would make it explode. Lost lives. Failure. Again.
Not on his watch.
“Not until everyone’s safe.”
Natasha looked at him with disbelief, probably questioning his sanity. “Everyone up here, versus everyone down there-“
“I’m not leaving this rock with one civilian on it,” Steve exclaimed stubbornly, the flame of fury lighting up in him.
No. Not this time, not again. He had failed too many times. He had lost so many battles and he was not about to lose another one, he was not about to fail people again.
Natasha gave him a sad smile. “I’m not saying we should.”
The look they exchanged spoke thousand words. This was indeed the end. They truly wouldn’t leave – they would either save everyone’s life or more likely died trying. There was a strange peace in that. That was how he was supposed to go, right? Like a soldier. Like a person who had decided to dedicate his life to save someone else’s. He just selflessly wished it would have been yours or Bucky’s or of someone who was closer to his heart. But he didn’t get to choose.
It was as if Natasha read his thoughts, when she whispered: “There are worse ways to go. Where else am I gonna get a view like this?”
Steve looked briefly over the edge of the flying crater of the city. He would think Natasha was right; but there were so many things he would rather see before he would close his eyes forever. Your smile for example, no matter where the two of you would be. Just your smile, knowing you were safe and he hadn’t failed.
But Steve wasn’t destined to have such luck.
When Fury’s voice announced them that the view would actually get better via their comms, Steve couldn’t help but chuckle and feel a little flicker of hope. A flare in the endless darkness. Maybe there were things they could fix and people they wouldn’t fail after all.
He only realized he had been a fool thinking that, when it was over and one of the lives they lost was Wanda Maximoff’s brother’s. Strangely enough, Steve envied him. But only a bit.
────── ·❆· ──────
The weirdest thing was Tony Stark being the one to pluck up his courage not to give up. Not that he was aware of that.
Saying goodbye to him as Steve decided to stay at the army base with Natasha, Tony had told him something so simple that it shouldn’t have moved Steve the way it did.
“Maybe I should take a page from Barton’s book. Buy Pepper a farm, hope nobody will blow it up…” Tony hummed almost lost in thoughts and Steve was once again surprised how the billionaire managed to bring a smile on his face despite all of their differences.
“The simple life.”
“You’ll get that too someday,” Tony reassured him with a smirk that poorly covered the sincerity behind his words. It was the softness in his eyes that gave it away.
“Yeah. Maybe.”
“Definitely, Cap. You know that me taking off doesn’t mean I’ll stop looking, right? You shouldn’t either. She’s out there somewhere. We’ll find her and bring her home.”
Steve smiled shakily at him, feeling the familiar adrenalin and determination flooding his veins. Tony was right. You were out there and they would bring you home, they just needed to try hard enough.
“Thanks, Tony.”
“Any time, Capsicle.” Tony patted Steve’s arm before he slid into his fancy car, the door clicking shut. Then the window rolled down, Tony’s head sticking out. “Oh, and do me a favour. Pop the question when we do, okay?”
The captain felt his cheeks burn, a chill running down his spine as Tony somehow sensed the change in Steve’s longing, but he couldn’t help but chuckle.
“Sure. Take care, Tony.”
The Iron Man saluted him with two fingers and with a roar of his sports car’s engine and a whole lot of whirled dust disappeared in the distance. Steve stared into nothingness for a an embarrassingly long time.
────── ·❆· ──────
He found Natasha absently staring into a wall, a tablet in her hand forgotten. She turned to him when the door clicked behind him.
“Done gazing into Tony’s eyes? Ready to go to work?” she teased, an easy smile on her lips.
The corners of her mouth rose higher when she saw his expression; she hadn’t seen him this determined for a while. It was funny what could make people happier. Natasha didn’t think losing Bruce somewhere in a quinjet could do that. Then again, they just saved multiple lives. Unlike her, Steve deserved the feeling of victory. If she didn’t feel quite the same, no one needed to know.
Steve’s thumbs slid into the loops of his belt as he stopped in front of her, rocking on his heels.
Uh-oh. Big announcement coming, she could tell as much, and she wasn’t sure she would like it.
“I’m ready,” Steve confirmed and one look into his eyes told Natasha that he spoke it was the truth – but not quite.
She knew that look too well. He had it every time they got a track on you. And since she knew for a fact that there were no new leads… her heart sank.
“Steve…”
Steve could immediately tell Natasha understood, just like he could see she didn’t approve.
“I should be out there, looking for her. I need to be, because she’s somewhere, alone, and she can’t hide forever. I’ll find her – but it needs to be my priority from now.”
“Steve,” she addressed him, softer this time, wary of her tone, so it didn’t sound like she was admonishing him. “We got no lead for eternity-“
“That only means we need to try harder!”
“We’re doing our best and you know it. The moment we get the tiniest lead – like the last time with early snow in London –, we drop whatever we do with the recruits and we’ll be on our way.”
“Natasha-“ he started out again, but she cut him off.
“You’re not the only one who’s desperate to find her, Rogers! But the world hasn’t stopped turning! There are still threats and we need to deal with it. She wouldn’t want to-“
“Don’t you dare to speak for her, Romanoff-!“
“For God’s sake, Steve! Do you really think she would have asked you not to look for her if she wanted you to drop everything and come find her? “
He gasped as he felt the air knocked out of him.
It pissed him off, the burning feeling of betrayal squeezing his chest. Why was she discouraging him from this? Why? And how dared she to speak for you? She hadn’t seen it. She hadn’t seen what he had, what they had been doing to you and finally it hadn’t been her idly hands letting you suffer, only watching it all happen.
Steve couldn’t hold it anymore. So he exploded.
“What she did was stupid! She could be tortured right now, Natasha, serving as someone’s personal lab rat! You said it yourself, we didn’t get a single lead-”
“Exactly. Where would you go?”
“I don’t know!” he yelled, throwing his hands in the air helplessly, his breathing getting quicker. Because she totally hit the nail on the head – Steve had no clue, but he was sick it. He needed to know, he needed to do something, because just waiting for something fall into his lap was torture. “But anything is better than doing nothing!”
“We’re not doing nothing, Rogers. We just saved countless lives-“
“But not the one that mattered!” he cried out, his fist hitting the railing so hard it shook around the whole room. The sound of it resonated in the suddenly silent space as the severity of the sentence fell on both Natasha and Steve.
The redhead pressed her lips together, tears she would later deny gleaming in her eyes. Steve leaned onto the railing, bowing his head in defeat. He did not mean to say that. Especially not to Natasha, who had just lost Bruce to God knew where.
Shit.
“I’m sorry, Natasha, I-“
The spy shook her head, blinking the sudden prove of weakness from her eyes.
“I get it. And I agree with the stupidity, but she did it because she believed it was the only option and a right one. And I rather believe she’s just that good neither we nor anyone else can find her than that she was captured.”
Her voice was thick with emotions she didn’t want to show and the guilt stung harder in Steve’s gut. He was being an ass. A big one. A selfish one on top of that.
“…I’m sorry I yelled at you.”
“I think I’ll live,” she sighed, lighting the tablet up. “I get it, Steve. I miss her too.” And I miss Bruce too. I’m scared for him, was left unspoken, but they both knew it might as well could.
“Yeah. I… I know.”
“And it’s not your fault she’s gone. I know you think it is, but that’s nonsense. Don’t beat yourself over it. Just don’t give up on her.”
Steve sighed, closing his eyes and attempting to regain his composure. His balled hands shook inconspicuously. He needed to be strong. He was expected to be strong, especially in front of the new recruits and no matter how much he hated it, moping wouldn’t help anyway. And hot-headed decisions, flying form one end of the world to another without an actual goal neither.
He cleared his throat. “Alright. What do we have here?”
“Bunch of kids who think they know what they’re doing.”
“And they are not a team.”
“And they are as far from a team they could be,” Natasha corrected him as she handed him the tablet and threw the door to a corridor leading to a training room open.
Steve studied all the names and pictures, mentally cataloguing them. “Sounds like a lot of work. Shall we start?”
────── ·❆· ──────
“Captain Rogers?” Wanda whispered shyly, her unmistakable voice heavy with accent.
Steve stopped in his tracks, trying to plaster a smile on his face. Interacting with her… it was too much. Her age, her powers, her persona – it was too similar, too much of a painful reminder of you and no matter how hard he tried to ignore it, the resemblance nagged him in the back of his brain like a constant itch he couldn’t scratch, because he couldn’t reach it.
“Yes, Wanda?”
“I’m sorry.”
Steve tilted his head, pretending his heart wasn’t beating out of his chest. Had she read his mind? She probably had, if not recently, then surely when they had been fighting against each other. But why speak up now? It must have been about something else.
“What for?”
“I am… still learning how to control the abilities,” she started hesitantly and it confused the hell out of Steve.
Was she apologizing for not making progress fast enough? They had just finished the first training. And of course, had fought a battle against an army of robots.
“That’s understandable. But you’re doing great.”
She smiled faintly. “Thank you. But… it’s… I can’t turn them off. I can… feel the pain and deep sadness settled in you.”
Steve froze. Well. Shit.
“And… when I caused you the hallucinations… I got a glimpse. I’m sorry.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” he rasped, not even shocked how the combination of her persona and the topic of their conversation brought right back on the edge. “You believed you were doing the right thing. We can’t change the past, but we can still do our best to make a better present and future.”
“Like she did?”
Steve glared into her eyes at the note, unable to say a word. She lowered her gaze.
“I said I got a glimpse, but she was almost everywhere – each of you thought of her. She always made an appearance, at least for a moment. I… I don’t know why I’m telling you this. I just… I guess I want to say thank you for giving me a chance to redeem myself and… and-”
“Wanda… you deserve a chance. You don’t need to thank for that. As for the other thing… I would appreciate if we kept the conversation about that on minimum.”
“Of course! I’m just… I’m working on some things, I’m trying to… to control someone’s emotions and I could help you to— I know it’s invasive!” she blurted out hastily as Steve’s expression changed into a horrified one. “But… with Pietro… I was able to keep tabs on him when on the field, we had a connection-“
“I’m very sorry for your brother, Wanda, I truly am,” Steve said softly, pouring some compassion in and resting his hand gently on her shoulder. Grief he understood too well.
“I… what I’m trying to say is that I would probably feel him at the other side of the world, because we were really close, and— and maybe-- maybe if you let me know Sno--- the person that you feel you have disappointed well enough, if everyone would let me… I think that perhaps with Vision’s help, I might be able to find her mind and track her down.”
Steve stared at the young woman paralyzed, absolutely stunned and with own mind a complete and utter mess.
Did she just said— did she-- could she really--- it sounded too good. It sounded insane. Like a sci-fi; but then again, his whole life was. This woman could read minds. She could move things with her mind, she could read emotions. She could---- could she really find you? It seemed impossible.
He didn’t want to give in to the hope. He always had, every single time the recognition system had found a face almost matching yours only to find a girl who could be your twin, every single time a weather anomaly occurred and he would chase down the lead like a madman only to find nothing, always scolding himself for believing you would be so careless. And the truth was, he was growing tired of it. He always followed, never letting the trail go cold, but with every failed attempt, he was being kicked lower and lower. The spark of determination from Tony had been very short-lived.
“Captain Rogers?”
“Yes?” Steve snapped from his daydreaming, eyeing Wanda absently.
“Your thoughts are screaming at me-- not your fault. Just… do you want to tell me about her? If I know her, I can start trying. And I understand we don’t know each other too well for you to open your mind completely so I could see and hear for myself. So… you could just tell me,” she suggested, this time being the gentle one. It was another reminder of you and it hurt like hell. And at the same time, the offer was painfully tempting. “I really do remind you of her a lot, don’t I?”
Steve gave her a sad smile, little broken on its edges.
“You have no idea.”
“Give me one, then. I could be a good listener.”
Steve chuckled as she offered him an elbow in a poor attempt of a joke and blinked away the tears he had no idea where had come from. He really should get a grip on himself.
“Okay. She… she was someone very special and unique…”
────── ·❆· ──────
Part 10
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Tags:
@mermaidxatxheart, @murdermornings, @elisaa-shelby @ask-hellbent-tweek @cxptain, @kallafrench, @smilexcaptainx @scentedsongrebel, @orions-nebula
────── ·❆· ──────
Bear with me. Were geting back to our Snowflake to see what she’s been up to... and as ou can probably guess, things will happen ;)
Thank you for reading!
#marvel#fanfiction#steve rogers x reader#steve rogers x you#steve rogers imagine#captain america imagine#captain america x you#captain america x reader#avengers#captain america#steve rogers#avenger reader#heart too cold but friends of gold#anika ann
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SPEECH FOR CIVIC ORGANIZATION
February 4, 1949
“Speech for Civic Organization” (aka “Liz Debates Alaska in Town Forum”) is episode #29 of the radio series MY FAVORITE HUSBAND broadcast on February 4, 1949 on the CBS radio network.
Synopsis ~ Liz, anxious to win the approval of an important dinner guest, simply agrees with everything he says. The guest is so impressed with her intelligence that he invites her to be a speaker at his next civic forum.
“My Favorite Husband” was based on the novels Mr. and Mrs. Cugat, the Record of a Happy Marriage (1940) and Outside Eden (1945) by Isabel Scott Rorick, which had previously been adapted into the film Are Husbands Necessary? (1942). “My Favorite Husband” was first broadcast as a one-time special on July 5, 1948. Lucille Ball and Lee Bowman played the characters of Liz and George Cugat, and a positive response to this broadcast convinced CBS to launch “My Favorite Husband” as a series. Bowman was not available Richard Denning was cast as George. On January 7, 1949, confusion with bandleader Xavier Cugat prompted a name change to Cooper. On this same episode Jell-O became its sponsor. A total of 124 episodes of the program aired from July 23, 1948 through March 31, 1951. After about ten episodes had been written, writers Fox and Davenport departed and three new writers took over – Bob Carroll, Jr., Madelyn Pugh, and head writer/producer Jess Oppenheimer. In March 1949 Gale Gordon took over the existing role of George’s boss, Rudolph Atterbury, and Bea Benadaret was added as his wife, Iris. CBS brought “My Favorite Husband” to television in 1953, starring Joan Caulfield and Barry Nelson as Liz and George Cooper. The television version ran two-and-a-half seasons, from September 1953 through December 1955, running concurrently with “I Love Lucy.” It was produced live at CBS Television City for most of its run, until switching to film for a truncated third season filmed (ironically) at Desilu and recasting Liz Cooper with Vanessa Brown.
REGULAR CAST
Lucille Ball (Liz Cooper) was born on August 6, 1911 in Jamestown, New York. She began her screen career in 1933 and was known in Hollywood as ‘Queen of the B’s’ due to her many appearances in ‘B’ movies. With Richard Denning, she starred in a radio program titled “My Favorite Husband” which eventually led to the creation of “I Love Lucy,” a television situation comedy in which she co-starred with her real-life husband, Latin bandleader Desi Arnaz. The program was phenomenally successful, allowing the couple to purchase what was once RKO Studios, re-naming it Desilu. When the show ended in 1960 (in an hour-long format known as “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour”) so did Lucy and Desi’s marriage. In 1962, hoping to keep Desilu financially solvent, Lucy returned to the sitcom format with “The Lucy Show,” which lasted six seasons. She followed that with a similar sitcom “Here’s Lucy” co-starring with her real-life children, Lucie and Desi Jr., as well as Gale Gordon, who had joined the cast of “The Lucy Show” during season two. Before her death in 1989, Lucy made one more attempt at a sitcom with “Life With Lucy,” also with Gordon.
Richard Denning (George Cooper) was born as Louis Albert Heindrich Denninger Jr., in Poughkeepsie, New York. When he was 18 months old, his family moved to Los Angeles. Plans called for him to take over his father’s garment manufacturing business, but he developed an interest in acting. Denning enlisted in the US Navy during World War II. He is best known for his roles in various science fiction and horror films of the 1950s. Although he teamed with Lucille Ball on radio in “My Favorite Husband,” the two never acted together on screen. While “I Love Lucy” was on the air, he was seen on another CBS TV series, “Mr. & Mrs. North.” From 1968 to 1980 he played the Governor on “Hawaii 5-0″, his final role. He died in 1998 at age 84.
Ruth Perrott (Katie, the Maid) was also later seen on “I Love Lucy.” She first played Mrs. Pomerantz (above right), a member of the surprise investigating committee for the Society Matrons League in “Pioneer Women” (ILL S1;E25), as one of the member of the Wednesday Afternoon Fine Arts League in “Lucy and Ethel Buy the Same Dress” (ILL S3;E3), and also played a nurse when “Lucy Goes to the Hospital” (ILL S2;E16). She died in 1996 at the age of 96.
Bob LeMond (Announcer) also served as the announcer for the pilot episode of “I Love Lucy”. When the long-lost pilot was finally discovered in 1990, a few moments of the opening narration were damaged and lost, so LeMond – fifty years later – recreated the narration for the CBS special and subsequent DVD release.
Gale Gordon (Rudolph Atterbury) and Bea Benadaret (Iris Atterbury) had not yet joined the cast as regular characters.
GUEST CAST
Frank Nelson (Mr. Barton) was born on May 6, 1911 (three months before Lucille Ball) in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He started working as a radio announcer at the age of 15. He later appeared on such popular radio shows as “The Great Gildersleeve,” “Burns and Allen,” and “Fibber McGee & Molly”. This is one of his 11 performances on “My Favorite Husband.” On “I Love Lucy” he holds the distinction of being the only actor to play two recurring roles: Freddie Fillmore and Ralph Ramsey, as well as six one-off characters, including the frazzled train conductor in “The Great Train Robbery” (ILL S5;E5), a character he repeated on “The Lucy Show.” Aside from Lucille Ball, Nelson is perhaps most associated with Jack Benny and was a fifteen-year regular on his radio and television programs.
Steve Allen (Scott Campbell, Expert on Alaska) was a talk show and variety host as well as a published composer. Although he was seen with Lucille Ball on awards and quiz shows, their first time acting together on screen didn’t come until 1978′s “Lucy Calls The President”. In 1980, Ball appeared on the premiere of “The Steve Allen Comedy Hour”. He died in 2000 at age 78.
TRIVIA: Madelyn Pugh and Bob Carroll Jr. were writers for the Steve Allen radio show and left that job to write for “My Favorite Husband.” They paid Allen to write his own show one week so they could focus on creating a script submission for “My Favorite Husband.”
EPISODE
ANNOUNCER: “As we look in on the Coopers tonight, they’ve settled down for a quiet evening at home. Liz has discovered an intelligence quiz in a magazine, but she’s having George’s attention, because he is lost in a gripping, blood-curdling murder mystery.”
George is reading “The Mummy’s Tummy” but Liz spoils the ending to get his attention. George can’t seem to answer any of the IQ questions correctly.
Q: “What is the name for the chemical formula H2S04?”
A: Sulfuric Acid
Q: “What does it say on the lid of a United States mailbox?”
A: Pull Down
Q: “For what was Ma Ferguson noted?”
A: The first woman Governor of Texas
George decides to quiz Liz, asking her a few questions.
Q: “What is the poop deck of the ship?”
Liz’s Answer: “The deck where the sailor’s rest when they’re pooped.”
Real Answer: “A raised portion of the rear deck.”
Q: “Does sound travel faster or slower in water than it does in air?”
Liz’s Answer: “Next question.”
Q: “Chicle is the main ingredient in chewing gum. Where is the largest deposit found?”
Liz’s Answer: “Under theatre seats.”
Liz realizes that they aren’t very smart and should probably do something about it. Dr. Guilfoyle, author of the quiz, suggests that a score under 50 needs to be addressed.
Liz is going to send for his book “How To Improve Yourself.”
LIZ: “Look at the people who recommend this book: Truman and Goldwyn.”
GEORGE: “Harry Truman and Sam Goldwyn?”
LIZ: “No, Sam Truman and Harry Goldwyn!”
Harry Truman (1884-1972) was the 33rd president of the United States from 1945 to 1953, succeeding Franklin D. Roosevelt after his death. He implemented the Marshall Plan to rebuild the economy of Western Europe, and established the Truman Doctrine and NATO. Sam Goldwyn (1879 -1974) was a film producer best known as the founder of several motion picture studios in Hollywood.
A few days later, the book has arrived and Katie the Maid notices Liz is engrossed in it. Liz states that the Doctor has three rules to impress people:
Learn Ten New Words a Day
Be a Good Listener
Have One Subject Down Cold So You Can Steer The Conversation Around To It
Liz’s has already got her ten new words and has put them in a sentence.
LIZ: “By assiduous application, I have promulgated a plethora of altruistic ubiquity and lugubrious perspicacity.”
The telephone rings, it is George telling Liz he is bringing home an important person named Mr. Barton, to dinner.
LIZ: “How important is he, George? Sirloin, T-bone, meatloaf, or hash?”
GEORGE: “Strictly sirloin.”
George explains that Mr. Barton is the one who picks the speakers for the open forums in town. George wants to get picked to be one of the first speakers so he can impress his boss, Mr. Atterbury, and possibly land a raise. George warns Liz to be herself and not try to impress him.
Liz decides to enact rule #3 and cracks open an encyclopedia to pick the subject. Much to her surprise, the subject she randomly picks is bees!
Walking up to the house that evening, Mr. Barton (Frank Nelson) confides in George that he is looking forward to meeting a simple housewife, since in his line of work the women are always trying too hard to impress him with their intellect.
George introduces Liz to Mr. Barton, who immediately notices that her vocabulary is amped up. Unfortunately, Liz is using the wrong words most of the time, saying ‘plethora’ for ‘pleasure’ and ‘diversify yourself’ for ‘divert yourself.’
George assures a nervous Mr. Barton that Liz is ‘just an old fashioned girl’.
MR. BARTON: “Sounds like she’s had too many Old- Fashioneds!”
An Old Fashioned is a cocktail made by mixing sugar with bitters and water, adding whiskey or brandy, and garnishing with orange zest and a cocktail cherry. It is traditionally served in a special glass called an Old Fashioned glass. A variation on this wordplay was used on “I Love Lucy” in “Million Dollar Idea” (ILL S3;E13) in 1954 when Lucy (disguised as an average housewife selected at random) describes the taste of Aunt Martha’s Old Fashioned Salad Dressing to deliberately encourage buyers to cancel.
LUCY: “Looks like Aunt Martha had too many Old-Fashioneds!”
In the kitchen, George tells Liz to stop using fancy words, so Liz moves on to rule #3 - her special subject: bees! She no sooner starts buzzing about bees when she is chided by George.
GEORGE (sternly aside): “Liz! Haven’t you forgotten? Mr. Barton’s forum!”
LIZ: “Well, I’m for ‘em, too!”
Coincidentally, Lucille Ball was one of several actors known as ‘Queen of the ‘B’s’ - which referred to ‘B’ pictures - films that were done quickly, on a budget, with lesser-known actors. In 1963′s “Lucy’s Barbershop Quartet” (TLS S1;E19) Lucy suggests they sing about bees!
Mr. Barton tells George he is going to sponsor a Shakespearean Company, if they can convince the City Council to fund them.
LIZ: “To bee or not to bee!”
"To be, or not to be" is the opening of a soliloquy by Prince Hamlet in William Shakespeare's play Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1. In the speech, Hamlet contemplates death and suicide. It is one of the most quoted phrases in all of literature. To Be or Not to Be is a also the title of a 1942 film starring Lucille Ball’s good friend Carole Lombard and Jack Benny, who later became her next door neighbor. The plot concerns a troupe of actors in Nazi-occupied Poland. The film was released one month after Lombard was killed in an airplane crash.
George drags Liz into the hall again, warning her to stop talking about bees! After telling him to “mind his own beeswax”, Liz reluctantly agrees just to listen attentively and agree with everything Mr. Barton says. This works so well, that Mr. Barton barely acknowledges George, but only talks to Liz! He is so impressed by Liz, he offers to have her on the panel of their very first forum on Saturday night! She instantly agrees!
Two days later she learns that the forum’s topic is “the effect of jet propulsion and supersonic flight on the future of aviation.” But Liz is un-phased. She has been preparing by buying a new dress, which she tells George has ‘a dive bomb neckline.’
George and Liz role play to prepare for the forum. Against George’s advice, Liz intends to talk about the Wright Brothers!
Orville and Wilbur Wright were inventors and pioneers of aviation. In 1903 the Wright brothers achieved the first powered, sustained and controlled airplane flight; they surpassed their own milestone two years later when they built and flew the first fully practical airplane.
At the meeting that night, Mr. Barton announces to the assembled crowd that their aviation expert, Colonel Davis, could not make it.
MR. BARTON: “He started her from Los Angeles, but he got slightly mixed up in a snowstorm and has just cabled us from Bombay, India.”
Bombay, India is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra. It was formerly renamed Mumbai in 1995 to better reflect the city’s roots and cut ties with its British origins. Coincidentally, a few months after this broadcast, the 1942 film Bombay Clipper was re-released. Although the Lucy gang never traveled to Bombay, it was mentioned in 1955′s “The Hedda Hopper Story” (ILL S4;E21) when everyone was looking for Mrs. McGillicuddy.
RICKY (Into phone): “Do you have any flights numbered 930? You do? Where's it coming in from? Bombay?”
LUCY: “Bombay?”
RICKY: “Well knowing your mother... No, even she wouldn't fly from New York to Los Angeles by way of India.”
Instead, Mr. Barton announces that the guest speaker is a famous authority on Alaska, Mr. Scott Campbell (Steve Allen). Unfortunately, Liz knows nothing about Alaska - so she starts to talk about the Wright Brothers instead!
In 1949 Alaska was not yet one of the United States, but was a US territory. The statehood movement gained its first real momentum in 1946 and Alaska was officially proclaimed a state on January 3, 1959. To mark this event, Desilu created a special episode of “The Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse” in which the Ricardos and Mertzes travel to Nome to cash in on a land deal, although no actual filming was done in the 49th state.
In 1952’s “Lucy Gets Ricky on the Radio” (ILL S1;E32) Lucy presciently (but incorrectly) answers the question “What was the last state to be admitted to the union?” by saying Alaska. At the time, the correct answer to the question was Arizona, admitted on Valentine’s Day 1912.
MR. BARTON: “No! When are you going to get to Alaska?”
LIZ: “Let me get the plane invented and I’ll fly up there!”
With nothing else to talk about, Liz starts to talk about bees, but Mr. Barton quickly cuts her off and turns the podium over to Mr. Campbell, who launches into a serious speech about the welfare of the children of Alaska. He suddenly turns to Liz and asks “Who is responsible for these children, Mrs. Cooper?”
LIZ: “You really want me to answer that? Wilbur and Orville Wright!”
In the bedtime tag, it is 4 o’clock in the morning and Liz is eating crackers in bed. Wrestling them away from her, George gets cracker crumbs all over the bed. A few seconds later, Liz is eating an apple! George takes it from her. He hears her eating a third time and goes to grab whatever it is away from her.
GEORGE: “Whoah! What was that!”
LIZ: “A glass of cold milk. Goodnight, George.”
End of Episode
Bob LeMond reminds listeners that Lucille Ball will soon be seen in the Paramount Picture Sorrowful Jones.
#My Favorite Husband#Lucille Ball#Richard Denning#Bob Lemond#Ruth Perrott#Sorrowful Jones#Frank Nelson#Steve Allen#Alaska#Bombay#The Wright Brothers#Sam Goldwyn#Harry Truman#I Love Lucy#Radio#CBS#Bombay Clipper#To Be or Not To Be#Bees#Old Fashioneds
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CHAPTER SIX: WILDFLOWER
Paring: ex!Bucky barnes x reader
Warnings: swearing, cheating, almost smutty near the end if you squint
Series Summary: Bucky realizes one can only run from their problems for so long before they must returns home but he sure as hell wasn’t expecting her to be there when he did.
Word Count: 2.6k
A/N: this series is based off the album “calm” by 5sos. if you want to follow along in the album, listen to Wildflower while reading this! thanks for supporting the series! i really love you guys! let me know what you think of the series!
series masterlist // masterlist
The blush that sat on your face sank deep into your skin as you lost your color. Bucky took note of your sudden change and concern captained his face. “Y/N… you ok?”
“Bucky...Y-you lied to me?”
“Y/N, what are yo-”
“You lied to me about last night Buck,” you sighed, hiding your face into your nervous hands. His head grew heavy with responsibility as it dropped with an exhale before he placed his hand on your knee and gathered your attention.
“I’m sorry Y/N, I should have said something. I just figured since you didn't remember it, well”, his hand momentarily left your leg as he ran it across the back of his neck. “I just figured that you didn't want to…”
Before you could start, he quickly continued. “Look at me,” Following his queue, your silent eyes lifted to meet his. “I don’t know what you remember, but I was absolutely sober. I meant every word that left my lips even if you didn’t. That being said, we just fell into a little bit of normalcy and I really don't want to lose that Y/N.” He searched your face anxiously for a response.
You looked down at your newly tied sneakers with a small grin. “I forgive you bucky, but I need you t-”
Fury’s sharp voice interrupted yours as it rang over the PA system on the course, “All recruits and essential personnel need to hurry their asses up into this building, we have reports of a storm coming our way and it does not look pretty.”
Other agents holding clipboards began walking faster as they made their way inside, encouraging you and Bucky to do the same. As you got into the building, even more agents filtered through you.
“Hey, Steve’s on his way over... look, why don’t I meet you after we all get settled and have dinner? Like 7ish?” he smiled.
You smiled back as you tried to control the butterflies that took over your stomach. “Y-yeah, sounds good.” He was quickly swept away by the blonde super soldier who was walking towards the conference room at a timely pace. You headed toward Tony’s office, taking a minute to process the events of the last hour or so. You had managed to lose yourself, replaying the dream-like encounter in your mind on loop, before reaching your destination. You shook the feeling off and allowed your knuckles to rap gently on the door's glass surface as Tony opened the door at the same time, almost trampling you in the process.
“Yea- wait no. just hold that till i get there. I’ll be- oh hey Y/N! Greg, give me a second, I’m on my way to the conference room now” he said before flipping his earpiece off. “Here to accompany me to the training briefing?” he laughed.
“Actually, I just wanted to hand off my paperwork. I need to help Pepper with the schedule for tomorrow,” you smiled warmly before grabbing the top few pages from your clipboard and extending them toward him.
“Oh right! Have fun and tell Mrs. Potts, she looks fabulous for me,” he smirked, taking the clipboard from your hands. You let a chuckle fall from your mouth as you passed him, heading towards Pepper’s office, only a few strides away.
Again, you found your knuckles knocking on a glass door as Pepper invited you in. “Y/N! It’s great to see you! Whatcha got for me?”
You handed her your clipboard and the remaining papers on it, “I made a list of possible sparring partners with the assistance of Sergeant Barnes during the evaluation which include estimated time based on skill level. It’s a rough outline and doesn’t include instruction time but it's a start” you smiled.
“God, you are the best!” she groaned in relief, flipping through the pages of your detailed work. “Way smarter than any of the other meatheads conducting evaluation,” she laughed before placing the clipboard on the desk and grabbing another. “I managed to get a lot done during the course training so I really don’t need much else. Could you just put this on Tony’s desk when you pass his office?”
You nodded, grabbing the new paper work before pausing, “Oh! Also Tony told me to let you know how fabulous you look,” you giggled, exiting the room and dropping the papers on Tony’s desk next door. After leaving a note that it was from Pepper, you glanced down at your watch and smiled at the timely end to your day.
You found yourself leisurely wandering to your room, dropping your work of the day at the door then closing it behind you when you finally arrived. Your hands found the wooden knobs of your dresser, pulling it open then sorting through your neatly folded pajamas in an attempt to finally get comfortable. Landing on the black t-shirt that your hands now rested on, you slid off your tight leggings and revealing sweatshirt, throwing on the oversized garment in their place. You asked Friday to play some background music as you grabbed a book off the shelf that sat next to your bed before finding a seat on the long gray couch that adorned your back wall.
Lost in the annotated pages of your favorite novel, the rain that thumped on your window added to the wonderful soundtrack your room emitted as you began to sink back into the familiar life you held here before you left. The time had escaped your mind until a soft knock thumped at your door. Your heart picked up drastically as you glanced at your watch again, this time denoting 7:00. He was punctual if nothing else.
You opened the door gently and welcomed the tall brunette in with a small nod, “Sergeant..” you giggled.
“Ma’m” he laughed back with a small bow before making his way into your room and reclining across your previously occupied couch. His eyes glanced over your bare legs drawing a light blush to your cheeks as you sat next to him, curling up into the corner of the gray loveseat. The comfort you had earlier in the day decreased at the lack of people around you as he started, “So you were saying something earlier.. You wanted something?”
The smile on his face infected your heart with warmth causing your body to shiver. “Y-yeah… I just wanted to know what happened last night… I mean I know what happened but I also, uh, well don’t and I know you would have never done a-anything like that but uhm..” you chuckled nervously, letting the hands that were on your knees fall down your smooth legs in an attempt to find any comfort hidden in this situation.
His hand met yours as he assured, “Nothing happened, I promise. There were some heated words exchanged and, uhm” he cleared his throat before you cut him off with a chuckle.
“No Buck, I-I know... “ you pointed to the now poorly covered hickey, letting your eyes fall to the ground with a small smile on your face. “I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't missing anything crucial.”
“Of course…” he said with a smile, standing up and offering you a hand. You grabbed his hand and he gently pulled you up from your seat, bringing your faces a little too close for your comfort.
“Nothing more happened than a mistake. I-I’m sure it won’t happen again” you mumbled, quickly becoming consumed in his eyes.
A cheeky grin danced onto his face as the gap between you seemed to be closing at an alarming rate. “Yeah, I’m sure.”
As you held the distance, centimeters from his face, you quickly cracked under the heavy blush that sat on your cheeks and stepped back in a sheepish manor, quickly dropping his hand and opening the door.
“Sargent,” you nodded, this time your eyes not leaving the floor.
“Ma’m.” A blush found itself on his smiling cheeks before he finally exited the room.
As you closed the door, you sank to the floor, holding your hands to your wildly beating heart.
You were made.
•••
The night passed quickly and it wasn't long before you found yourself in the gymnasium of the training hall, present for the next phase of recruitment week. The groups were divided by skill level and prospects were matched by Pepper using your scouting report.
Director Fury led the mornings commencements, taking his rightful place upon the platform at the front of the room. “Ok listen up. We are going to start dividing into groups, pay attention and follow orders or consider yourself cut. Howell, Barker, Morton, Hale, Preston. You have been assigned to Agents Romanoff and Barton, please follow your evaluator, Agent Rooney to the training room. Cole, Duran, Gonzales, Sims, Fields. You have been assigned to Agents Rogers and Barnes, please follow your evaluator Miss. Y/L”
As continued to give instructions, you raised your arm with a smile and waved, gathering the attention of the prospects who swiftly found their spots in front of you. Turning around, you began reading off the script while leading them out of the main gym.
“All right recruits, if you would follow me this way I will be taking you to an offshoot of the training facility. These rooms will be occupied by you and your instructors while I observe your progress and take notes on your performance. You will each battle in hand to hand combat and receive basic corrections from your instructors. This test is about strength and coordination just as much as your ability to receive criticism and be coached,” you paused, stopping in front of a black door. “This is where you will enter momentarily. In the event of an emergency, we will make a right here to return to the hallway we just came from, then another right to return to the main gym. When we enter, you will find a seat against the back wall and your instructors will be in to meet you briefly. Does anybody have any questions?” The small group all shook their heads in response. “Great, good luck!” you smiled, opening the door and letting them inside. Black walls encased the small room and the only illumination was found hanging above the giant white circle that laid upon the center of the black mats. You peeled off through the other door lining the walls and were greeted by two smiling faces upon entering.
“Did you scare ‘em?” Steve laughed as he and Bucky passed you.
You winked before giggling,“Only a little.”
The boys entered the room, giving a very similar speech to you before calling up the first match. You watched through the one way mirror as Daniel Cole, a tall brunette built like a steam roller and Alexa Gonzales, a small brunette with an athletic build, took their places on the edge of the circle. They quickly entangled themselves, Alexa mercilessly placing hits on him with her unbelievable agility until she found herself suddenly pinned under the much bigger Daniel.
“That was a really great job Alexa. You had him on the ropes but he managed to grab your arm. Can anybody tell me what shifted the momentum here?” Steve paused. Met with silence he continued, “With you being so much smaller than him, you can't do the normal reversal here which leaves you open to the arm bar he caught you in. Uh, let me- Y/N? Can you come here for a second?” Steve called through the glass. You tried to call back, quickly remembering the room was he couldn't hear you through the soundproof walls. You got up quickly and peaked your head through the door.
“How can I help?” you offered with a smile.
“Can you demo an arm bar reversal on Bucky for them step by step I can walk them through it?”
You nodded as you laid down on the mat, allowing Bucky to lock you in the arm bar and Steve to begin. “So with his legs significantly longer than her arms, she can't reconnect her hands to pull herself up,” he paused prompting you to move into your next position. “Instead, she bridges her shoulders off the ground and rotates, pulling herself under his leg then up and over as opposed to..” his words quickly faded away as you laid on top of Bucky. You could feel his heavy breath on your neck as you held the position, desperate for Steve to say break. As if he could read your mind he speech quickly stopped causing you to jump to your feet and offer a hand to Bucky, eventually pulling him up.
You disappeared back into the eval room more breathless and red in the face then you’d like to admit. As they continued their instruction, you found it harder and harder to maintain your composure with Bucky demonstrating throw after throw. It drove you mad watching him do what he does best and your close contact didn't help your growing want for him. As Steve handed out correction after correction, Bucky became quieter, eventually pulling Steve in and mumbling something in his ear. Steve nodded with a smile before Bucky began walking towards your door.
He slipped into the room and gently closed the door behind him.
“Hey, do you need any help with eval?” Walking behind you, he peeked over your shoulder to read your notes and his closeness burned through your hold body.
Without thinking, you turned your head and connected your lips to his. He quickly broke the kiss, shock written on his face through his raised eyebrows and slightly agape mouth.
You braced yourself for the cold rejection you knew too well but much to your surprise, he pulled you up, connecting your lips again. His hands slammed roughly into your hips as he lifted you up prompting you to wrap your legs around his waist. He carried you towards the door, flipping the lock before practically slamming your back into the dark wall behind you. Your teeth caught his bottom lip, drawing a groan from his slightly swollen lips, before breaking quickly to pull off your shirts. He released a quiet needy whine at the absence of your lips but was muted by them smashing into his again. Your hands ran down his chest as he put your feet on the ground and trapped your body against the wall with his large arms, opting to continue his kisses down the side of your neck. His hands ran the sides of your body feverishly, reacquainting him with the details that he had desperately tried to forget over the past year and a half. Your lips then connected with his neck, reliving memories of your own as you gently began to gently suck and nibble at his sweet spot, being careful not to leave a hickey.
“God, you are the only one who fucking does that right,” he groaned before your lips met again. His hands slid down your waist and on to your ass as he squeezed hard enough for you to know there would be a bruise in the morning. He then moved his kiss down to your collarbone and gently bit down. Your hand found his shoulder as you lightly pushed him back, leaning for a last kiss before breaking all contact between you.
“You don’t get to leave marks if I can’t Buck....” you said softly, scooting under his arm and throwing your t-shirt back on. You tossed him his shirt next and as he slid it on over his confused face you unlocked the door, propping it open slightly. You grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the door before, your hand found his now clothed chest.
You pressed up onto your tippy toes to reach his ear, “I can't be a side piece Sarge and you know that. If you decide to end it with the girlfriend, then you can mark me up. Any way you want,” you whispered before fixing his disheveled hair and fully opening the door.
#Bucky Barnes#bucky barnes fanfiction#bucky barnes x reader#bucky x you#bucky x female reader#ex!bucky barnes au#ex!au#ex!bucky barnes#buckysbest calm#marvel x reader#marvel fanfiction#marvel series
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Monster
Parings: James “Bucky” Barnes x Reader.
Warnings: +18 Mentions of torture, mature language, future smut, mentions of death, slight depression, mentions of kidnapping.
Word Count: 3,768
Summary: You are one of the youngest members of the Avengers, and you love it. Out of the blue an impossible mission is assigned to you alongside Natasha Romanoff, and it was sure to change your life. Lies, and betrayal from the closest people in your life; they never told you who you really were.
Chapter Number: 1
Chapter Tittle: You.
A/N: You guys already know I suck at summaries, so there’s no surprise if you think this is shit. This is my first fanfiction work that I wrote back in 2016 but I have edited this so much that the original script is nothing compared to the new one. It has the same plot, but better played out (hopefully). I’ll be posting the newer version for the first time here, but the original drafts are still up on the other websites except for chapter 1, which is already edited. I’ll be posting the other parts randomly, so do not expect me to be updating it regularly. I hope you guys enjoy this!
It has been almost a year since you became an Avenger. You were sixteen when S.H.I.E.L.D first contacted you. You helped them a lot doing some intel work and data coding, that for some reason S.H.I.E.L.D didn't have people for. You always wanted to ask why they couldn't find someone older or with more experience, but you didn't want to stop helping, so you never bothered asking. Among everyone in the team you were one of the youngest members. It was fair to say that when the Avengers had first asked you to be part of the team, you didn't believe. All of them tried at some point; the first one being Tony Stark.
Flashback
You were training, hard, like you always did. When you were finished and ready to leave, you saw Tony Stark grinning your way, folder in hand. Surprised to see the billionaire, you glared at him trying to figure out why he was there standing against the doorframe while a seventeen-year-old trained.
"You shouldn't train that hard, you could hurt yourself, Sweetie," he said with the same grin on his face.
"Mr. Stark," you said a little annoyed at the implication that you could possibly be fragile.
"I'll make this fast. We need you, Y/n, to join the Avengers," he had said it as if it was something normal to say to someone.
"I... excuse me, but what?" You were stunned at his words. You couldn't wrap your head around the thought of being asked to become an Avenger, it was too surreal.
"Well, you see, I was doing some 'research' one night and somehow I ended up looking at your reports." He had started to approach you, the hints of a smile on his lips. The folder you had eyed earlier was, what you now had guessed, your reports.
"First, you hacked S.H.I.E.L.D? Again? Second, Why me? It's not like I have superpowers or anything remotely interesting about me," you exclaimed, eyebrow raised at him.
"Yes, and yes. To answer your last question: Romanoff, and Barton don't have powers either, but they have great abilities when it comes to combat, and they have party tricks too. You, Y/N, with what I've read, you are at the same level as Romanoff in IQ; both of your reports have great feedback from Fury, and we all know that doesn't come by easily. You can have your way with coding without being detected, and just with your phone. You would be great with your intel alongside me, and I'm sure if you're up to it, you can easily be trained to be just as skilled along everyone else so you feel more comfortable in the team." Tony's voice had turned to a serious one the minute he had entered business mode.
"Well, I really appreciate you coming here and telling me all of this, but I don't know what to say. I don't feel like I'll fit in the role of an Avenger, but I will let you know," you said while grabbing your stuff. You wanted in, but you just didn't feel ready nor it felt right. God! You were friends with Natasha and Clint. If you'd said yes, it would had been so much fun to be part of the team and being able to hang out with people you looked up to.
"Well, never had anyone rejecting becoming an Avenger. We would really like to have you in the team. Call me when you have an answer," Tony said before extending a hand for you to shake.
"Will do, Mr. Stark."
End flashback
You didn't called him back. They didn't reach out to you until a month had passed. The next time around, they had decided to try with heavy weapons—Clint Barton and Natasha Romanoff.
Flashback
You had been training all morning with both of them. It was fun training with them because you got to hang out with people you considered family. You'd managed to pin Clint while Natasha was already on the floor after you had managed to surprise her from behind. You were surprised. For once, you weren't the one pinned down. After you had let go of Clint and Natasha, they got up all sweaty, Clint groaning a bit. You had made your way towards the other side of the mat where your water bottle laid. You hadn't noticed that Clint and Natasha were walking towards you while they talked in hushed voices among themselves.
"So, Y/n, you haven't called Stark to announce that you are joining the Avengers," mused Natasha, tiny grin on her face. Nevertheless, eyeing you for your reaction.
"I still don't think that I should accept the offer, it doesn't feel like the right time. I don't know, but I feel like...I don't know what I feel like," you sighed and took a seat on the closest bench.
"Well, whatever you're feeling right now seems to be truly affecting you, because I remember when you had just started, and hacked S.H.I.E.L.D. Remember, Nat? When she found out about 'The Avengers Initiative'?" Said Clint, smirking at you, taking the seat next to you. Natasha just chuckled at the memory.
"Alright, I was pretty young back then and let me tell you, thinking about it seemed unrealistic, and it still does. It sounded like something incredible to partake it, but I don't feel like I can be as great as everyone in the team.
"You know what, I don't want to talk about it anymore. I want to go eat! I'm starving!" You exclaimed getting up from the bench, trying to evade the whole talk about the Avengers and their offer. There was silence for a whole two seconds before Clint broke it.
"So, how about we eat pizza and watch a movie in your room, Y/n?" Silently, you thanked Clint for understanding your wish to evade the whole thing. At least for the time being.
End flashback
After two long months of pondering the idea, you decided to join. Before you had said yes to the offer, they had sent Steve Rogers to try to convince you to join. You still said that you'll call when ready, and a week later you did.
Not soon after, you were officially part of the Avengers, and you got to live in Stark tower. You loved it there; hanging out with everyone, and the thrill of training alongside everyone—a God, a super soldier, 2 ex-assassins, and a dude in an armor—was something you didn't expect to love. Working with Bruce and Tony in the lab was great, although you weren't allowed to touch many things without having Tony telling you not to break it. You felt like a child when they worked on their projects and when you got the impulse to reach and touch something, Tony would immediately sense it. Furthermore, doing pranks to the Avengers with Clint was always something to look for and gossiping and training with Natasha was a whole great deal by itself.
A whole year of being an Avenger had gone by so fast that it felt like you had blinked one second to open them the next to see a whole new life. You still felt a little weird when the guys (or people in general) called you an Avenger. It just didn't really stick to your brain that now that was your 'title'.
The very first mission you had as an official Avenger was when Ultron had decided to destroy the world. You still wondered how you never realized what Tony and Bruce had been working on had been a genocidal robot.
Soon after, you were not the only newbie in the team. Wanda had joined the team after the fight in Sokovia. You two had become close after Wanda lost her brother Pietro. The poor thing at first rarely left her room. You were there for her, and she would always tell you that you needn't be. Of course, you didn't listen, and always stayed. Wanda hadn't been the only addition to the team: there was Sam Wilson (who you had met before) and dear old Jarvis, now, Vision. They were great, Vision being your favorite, especially because he seemed to make Wanda happy.
Those times seemed to be long ago, when your life seem to be just perfect. You didn't know that the things to come were going to taint all those memories.
°°°°°
You found yourself in the living room with Nat, going over your last mission when Steve came in. He greeted you both, his usual demeanor tainted with something.
"What's wrong Steve? You look like you could kill somebody with that stare you've got," said Nat a little amused, but the concern could be heard by those who paid attention. He looked up and let out a long sigh; you thought maybe he felt a little bored or something else, but no—you wished it had been that, though.
"S.H.I.E.L.D found Bucky, Nat. They want the two of you to bring him in." He looked as if he'd wished you would turn down the assignment.
"I feel like as a S.H.I.E.L.D agent I should know who this 'Bucky' person is, but no, it doesn't ring a bell." You felt a little sheepish. You had one job and couldn't even do that, but in your defense, you just had a bad memory when it came to names—or anything, really.
"We know him as the Winter Soldier, Y/n. We have just been assigned to bring him in." Nat, for once, looked a little uncomfortable with a mission. That look only lasted enough for you to witness, and if you'd blink you wouldn't had been able to see it. Her discomfort just made your nerves rise.
"Oh." That's all you managed to say. The Winter Soldier had been found and your superiors wanted you to bring him in. Were you allowed to resign or was it too late?
"I tried telling them that I could do it myself, but they said that I could compromise the mission because of our relationship," huffed Steve, the man looking angrier by the second.
"Well, I guess you have the folder for the mission?" Nat looked at Steve with sympathetic eyes. Her eyes always seem to glimmer with a softness that rarely was shown, and Steve seemed to always be the one to receive it, and that made the woman glow—unbeknownst to her, though. You still haven't managed to make her come clean about her obvious smitten state for the Captain—well, obvious to you and Wanda.
Steve just sighed once more before handing the folder to Natasha. "Here," said Steve with what sounded like a defeated tone. You and Natasha took a good 10 minutes to read it thoroughly. Steve looked ready to hear what information it held, or at least any he hadn't been told.
You looked at Natasha, debating whether to tell him about it or not. She gave a low sigh before fixing her eyes on Steve. "He obviously has been on the move for a while, because he wasn't easy to find. He is not too far from the city, though. We just need to try and convince him to come with us, but we are to use force if he resists. They are honestly hoping he doesn't. Seems too risky, but what else is there to do?"
"We'll call you, Steve, if anything happens." You added, giving him a little smile before leaving him alone in the living room, heading to get ready for the mission.
You just hoped everything went smooth, with no bumps down the road.
You couldn't afford to mess up.
#bucky barnes#james barnes#Winter Soldier#Steve Rogers#captain america#natasha romanoff#Black Widow#reader#reader input#reader insert#bucky barnes x reader#bucky x reader#winter soldier x reader#marvel#mcu#avengers#Monster#theravenclawlover#fanfiction#avengers fic#avengers fanfiction#spies#SHIELD#HYDRA#multi chapter
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Counterpart [4/5]
Pairing: Bucky x Reader x Framework!Steve
Series Masterlist | Main Masterlist | Words: 5k
A/N: When Nat went underground, instead of dying her hair blonde like in IW, she dyed it black. I had fun with the idea of Nat and Pietro and Bucky forming this unconventional family of sorts, and I loved playing with the idea that Sam and Carol were old friends in the framework, though tbh, I don’t really know where her framework arc might lead. I will have to do a second pass proofread but anyway...
Note: There’s a Framework centric spin-off in the WIP tank!
Warnings: This chapter contains depictions and mentions of alcoholism, language, violence, etc. It’s a dark series, expect a darker take.
CHAPTER FOUR: TWO HALVES
~Canada, The Refuge
The sound of birds chirping outside his window stirred him from his slumber. Bucky was still groggy from sleep, rubbing the remnants of unconsciousness from his eyes with the pads of his flesh fingers. He yawned awake, sitting up from under the covers of the double bed. Glancing at the clock, he noted it was 6 am.
"72 hours," he reminded himself as got up from the bed and walked to the closet, a watch materialising on his wrist, a timer counting down.
"Thanks, Friday," he looked to the ceiling.
There was no reply. Only the sound of wind rustling through the blinds.
While digging through the closet, he was surprised to find several women's clothes hanging next to his. Choosing to ignore that red flag, he reached for a long-sleeved shirt on the rack and noticed his metal arm was a different colour than the usual chrome-blue and gold. This one was red, white and blue.
Cap's colours, he internally pointed out.
A canary emblem in place of the Russian star he had once sported.
"What the?" He glanced at the etched bird using the door fitted mirror beside him. When his eyes looked up to inspect his face, he was greeted by a head of short hair, shaven at the sides. He would have looked military if not for his medium length stubble. He ran a hand through his spikey hair, the brush of it against the metal feeling unfamiliar, "Is this pomade?"
As soon as his hand fell from the trailed paths his fingers had parted through his styled hair, a woman's voice spoke out dotingly, "Morning, Soldat."
The woman's Russian accent was faded but present, she sounded almost like...
"Nat?" Bucky swung around.
She tilted her head to the side. Her hair was longer, darker, a charcoal blackness that absorbed the light. Her face marked by an imposing lateral scar running across the length it, partially healed like a botched brazing job. She looked different but it was indeed her.
"Nat?" She laughed awkwardly. "Not Talia?" She shrugged as she walked over. "Semantics." Her gaze running across his exposed chest with shameless desire.
"Ugh, Nat- Talia, what are you?" Bucky tried to use the closet door to hide his body.
Natasha laughed again as though he were being silly, "You're acting weird this morning. When you're done being all modest, come down to the kitchen so we can start making breakfast for the kids."
Bucky's eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets, "Kids?"
It was then that he noticed the couple’s photo of him and Nat on the nightstand, coupled with Nat's flirty behaviour, the double bed and the shared closet, everything finally made sense. And now his stomach was doing summersaults.
"Kids?" Bucky said again as he stared at Natasha with his mouth agape. "Nat… Uhh, Talia."
"You can call me Nat if it's suddenly easier for you, liybimaya."
Bucky's neck reclined back as if those words had slapped him, "My love...?"
"Yes?"
"What is- Never mind… Um, do you know how to get in contact with Shield?"
"James, I thought we agreed to let that go. We have enough responsibilities with the kids as it is." Natasha pointed to the portrait style picture hung up on the wall.
Bucky peered at the sixteen by twenty inch photograph. In the forefront was a group of kids of all shapes and sizes, seated on two rows of benches, wearing clashing colours and sporting wide grins as they looked out at the camera. Natasha, Pietro, Bucky and a scary, muscly woman stood behind them. Pietro had thrown up an 'L' sign behind the other Bucky's face, his cheek lines prominent in an obvious laughing position while Natasha had pressed her face between two young children, one of them sticking out their tongue playfully.
Underneath the portrait was an engraving on a brass plate: Second Chance, Home for the Displaced Children of Sokovia, 2017.
"Oh, those kids," Bucky sighed inaudibly, relief hitting him like a wave of ice-water. When he turned back to answer the raven-haired woman blinking rapidly his way, he almost felt sorry for her. Even if she wasn't real to him, she was very much real in her own right, and this very real person had just lost the man she shared a life with. What was worse was that she didn't realise it yet.
"Right, of course, how silly of me to forget about that." Bucky's lips wound up in a corkscrew motion as he pulled his shirt over his head. "Okay, then do you know how to get in contact with Fury?"
"What is a 'Fury'?"
Bucky's eyes rolled in the back of his head, "A figment of my imagination apparently. How about Sam Wilson?"
"Sam… Wilson?" Her lips upturned in a half-moon. "Is he someone from your Shield days? The name is familiar…"
"Uhh, yeah, something like that."
Natasha frowned, "What's really going on with you? You're acting strange this morning. This isn't because of the news last night is it?"
"News?"
"That Hydra captured the Iron-Maiden?” Natasha patted his chest. “Pepper is stubborn, she won't talk, you can relax. We're safe as houses as long as we stay across the border." She left the bedroom as Bucky pulled on his jeans.
Jogging after her, he spotted another framed photograph of a younger version of him shaking hands with someone who looked presidential hanging on the Livingroom walls.
"Hurry up Soldat, these potatoes won't peel themselves."
"I'll be right there Na- Talia!" Bucky searched the large living space for a computer or electronic device, he needed to get familiar with this world before he could make any efforts to find Y/N.
After he had moved some couch cushions and disorganised several drawers, Natasha came back into the room, peeling knife in hand.
"James? What are you looking for?"
"The… remote?" His voice went squeaky. “I wanted to check the news updates.”
Natasha brushed the edges of her fringe away from her eyes as she blinked rapidly again, "James the kids lost that days ago. We sent Pietro to buy a new one while on his supply run." She peered at him, folding her arms defensively. "Are you sure everything is fine?"
Bucky exhaled, moving closer to Natasha so he could look her earnestly in the eye, "No, it's not."
Her mouth fell, "What's the matter, liybimaya?"
Bucky glowered briefly, "A friend of mine is in danger, a Shield agent. I need to help her before it's too late, but to do that I need to find her. Sam Wilson was… her contact. If I find him, I can find her."
"You've never mentioned this before..." Natasha rubbed his metal arm with her free hand. "The tablet is in the bedroom, you can search about your friend."
"Thank you!" Bucky buzzed with energy, teetering in front of Natasha indecisively, unsure of what their dynamic was. He settled for kissing her on the forehead, awkwardly.
"You're… welcome…?" She watched him jog back into their shared bedroom, her fingers spinning the peeling knife with great skill.
Bucky fished out the tablet, dismayed to find it password protected, "Shit!" He leaned his head in his hand as he thought of possible password combinations. "Okay, let's try my birthday."
The screen remained locked, a message notifying him he had two more chances.
"Damn it! If I'm with Shield in this universe, maybe I just got the format wrong..."
Bucky typed his birthday in the American format.
The screen was still locked.
"It can't be Y/N's birthday because this world's Bucky probably never met her…" Bucky drummed his fingers against his temple, his eyes widening when he punched in another set of numbers.
The screen unlocked.
"Curious..." Bucky thought out loud before opening up a search engine.
When he searched for the name: Y/N Y/L/N, he was perplexed when nothing came up, instead, there was a small 'i' icon at the edge of the screen that suggested: "Did you mean Y/N Rogers?"
Bucky pressed his lips into a white slash, his neck turning stiff as his finger hesitated above the red highlighted words. After taking a moment to gather himself, Bucky's metal finger tapped on the link swiftly, the metal colliding with the glass harder than he intended.
A news headline popped up and Bucky read the words, keeping pace with the speed of the scrolling script, "Android Ensures New Yorkers Sleep Safer. Hydra's top of the line security android, Spectre, successfully apprehended and pacified the Iron Maiden's (Virginia 'Pepper' Potts) terrorist cell with record low losses. Steve Rogers and his team (comprising of veteran Hydra officers Clint Barton and Y/N Rogers) were present at the sight, providing ground support and med-evac assistance. This signifies a new milestone in overseeing Director Alexander Pierce's vision for a safer, brighter world under Hydra's protective governance.”
Bucky's molars strained from the stress of his compressed jaw, memories of Alexander Pierce and the mind splitting brain-washing sessions made his blood boil. Shaking his head, which felt odd considering his hair didn't sway into his eyes, Bucky continued scrolling through other articles.
"Power couple of the century?" he retorted sarcastically as the picture of Steve and Y/N dressed in wedding attire mocked him. Their happy faces a punch to the gut. How could he feel jealous, angry and mournful at both his best friend and his girlfriend all at once?
Bucky's metal arm propelled the tablet like a boomerang at the wall, only it never reached it.
"I leave for two days and you return to your old brooding self, smashing furniture like we can afford it?" Pietro tossed the tablet in the air with a boyish grin on his face. "Come, friend, you better not let Talia see those tight eyebrows, huh." He flashed over to the dresser and back, tablet no longer in his hand as he patted Bucky on the back. "We can't keep reminding you that it's not your fault Steve was awoken by the tentacle crazies. What could you do, huh? You were a popsicle stick for almost a hundred years. A hundred years!"
Bucky felt his anger lose its hold on him, for a moment he had forgotten everything he was feeling and seeing wasn't real. Somehow having Pietro sit beside him, treating him like a friend, made that all clear again because Bucky had never met Pietro, he had only ever seen pictures of him hanging in Wanda's room, his very presence was the stark jolt of surrealism he needed to remind himself of why he was here.
"You're right," Bucky said as he rose from the bed and retrieved the tablet.
"Oh, hey, hey, hey now," Pietro held his palms up at Bucky. "You aren't planning to-" he made a throwing gesture at the wall.
Bucky's cheek lifted up as he returned a calming half-smile, "Don't worry, I'm not going to throw anymore furniture."
Pietro let out a shaky laugh, hands placed on his hips as his cheeks inflated from a deep exhale, "Good, because I broke the other one and we don't want to see Talia get mad again."
"Err, right. That would be…" Bucky pressed the 'e' at the end of his sentence as Pietro looked on with buggy eyes. "…Bad?"
Pietro nodded in agreement.
"Oh, did you remember to get the replacement remote?" Bucky asked as he typed in Sam's name into the search engine.
Pietro smacked his thigh with the underside of his hand, "I knew I forgot something. Don't tell Talia I was here, I'll go pick it up right now."
Pietro flashed out of the space in a fraction of a second, residual wind from his velocity drying out Bucky's eyeballs.
"Jesus," Bucky whispered when he read the information packet on Sam.
~Sam's Homestead, Missouri
Sam was rudely awoken by his loud alarm clock that sounded more like a fire alarm than a soothing melody. He smashed the digital clock as he fumbled with his sheets. His breath tasted of something foul, like stagnant bile, and his head pounded like a marching band had just traipsed across his synapses, a throbbing sensation pulsing at his temples.
When his eyes finally opened he was horrified by the disastrous state of his avatar's home. Clothes were piled on the floor, blinds shut, several cans and bottles littering the space, filling the air with a stale rancid smell of sweat, malt and sick.
He glanced down at his vest and noticed the vomit stains, "Jesus Christ."
Sam groaned as he motioned to sit up from the bed. However, with his balance out of whack, he tumbled onto the floor, face-first into a pile of unwashed slacks that made him retch.
"What the fuck?" He looked down at his feet and noticed he only had the one leg. The other was amputated at the knee leaving behind a mangled scar and a phantom pain that his conscious mind refused to reconcile since the real version of him still had control of both his legs, submerged in a tank underwater. "I didn't see this comin’."
Sam rolled his eyes as he hoisted himself back onto the bed and looked around for a pair of crutches, reaching under the bed instinctively, he was pleasantly amazed to find them there. "Let’s try this again."
He picked himself up on one leg, hobbling about on his crutches that got tangled with all the clutter on his way out of the room.
"Hello?" Sam called out into the dusty, humid house but there was no reply, only dead silence and the grinding of a fan in need of oiling. "Man, this is turning out to be one hell of a bad day."
A stopwatch manifested on his wrist, the hours counting down. Sam pulled his head back, eyes searching for some kind of sign in place of the water-stained ceiling, "Friday, I need to get in touch with Bucky, know how I can do that?"
Silence.
"Yeah, figures."
When he got to the kitchen he saw a note scribbled on a piece of stationery: 'There's some clean laundry in the dryer. I restocked your fridge. Remember: one day at a time. S.'
"S? Who the hell is S?" He complained, turning on his three legs to get a feel for the room. A wistful sigh filling the emptiness.
A gurgling noise rumbled from his stomach, the headache that most likely succeeded his avatar's heavy night of drinking was undoubtedly the cause. Sam tried to clear his throat and rid the taste of fermented wheat from his tongue and teeth, but it didn't help much, It only made him realise how desperate he was for a good shower and a bottle of mouthwash.
He set the rusty coffee pot to brew, deciding the metal tang it would adopt would only be a trick of the senses and hopefully not carry any lasting side effects. He cracked open a window, letting the smell of conifers and rain unclog his sinuses. He then clomped his way down to the bathroom and ran himself a bath after he figured showering would be more of a challenge given his new-old condition.
It bothered him more that he could still feel his leg. It was so surreal to look down and see it gone every time. The irritation digging into his under-arms from the crutches was a psychological reminder of the harsh reality he was about to be subjected to in this world.
After brushing his teeth and changing into new clothes, which required some tactful manoeuvring, Sam looked around for any electronic device that connected to the internet.
"Bingo!" He cheered as he saw a tablet stuffed between two couch cushions. There was no password protection on the device. "Gee, I guess I got nothin' to hide huh? Well if that's the case..." Sam typed his name into the search engine and regretted it immediately after he read the first few headlines: 'Reckless Pilot Destroys Multi-Million Dollar Flight Suit; Drunk, Dishonourably Discharged; Sam Wilson's Vet Clinic Foreclosure; Disgraced Pilot Flees to the Hills.'
"Well, this is depressing," Sam threw the tablet on the couch, opting to switch on the news channel instead. As he rifled through the strange house, the news reporter filled him in on whatever passed for news in this new, frightening world.
"Eyewitnesses report of seeing a strange blue and white streak making its way across Europe earlier this week. Hydra enforcements remind all citizens to call the subservient prevention hotline if they see any person or persons acting suspiciously," the reporter said.
Sam guffawed as he flipped through old photo albums, "Oh yeah, scare the little guy into giving up his neighbour… real patriotic."
"In other news, Hydra's defence android, dubbed Spectre by the head office, has successfully led a charge to apprehend and pacify the Iron Maiden's terrorist cell earlier this week. Citizens of New York can sleep safer knowing that this menace has been brought to justice and is expected to fill out her life sentence behind bars at the Hydra supermax prison."
Withholding the urge to spit, Sam clamped down on his crutches and stomped to the kitchen to grab that cup of coffee.
The reporter continued her deep-dive, "And now, politics. Hell's Kitchen boasts another prosperous year under the leadership of Mayor Fisk. Following recent events concerning the escape of the Punisher, former military specials unit Captain Billy Russo, local citizens have demonstrated their support for the mayor's proposed anti-vigilante task force by taking to the streets in protest against the rising number of subservients. Opposing mayoral candidate, Congressman Murdock, warns voters to not be so hasty with their vote as he fears the new proposed task force may cause an increase in police unemployment rates."
Sam switched the TV off, his frustration causing him to toss the remote callously onto the couch, where it bounced and smashed onto the floor, batteries popping out of the casing and rolling under the couch.
Not without difficulty, Sam got on his one knee, his stump waving in the air without a place to perch, and extended his arm under the sofa, patting down to try and feel for the cylindrical batteries. An odd film textured object slid across his calloused pads as he patted down on the floorboards.
With an interested drone, Sam fished out the glossy paper and fell back on his ass so he could observe it properly. It was a photograph of him with someone who looked like an aged Carol Danvers. She was wearing a green flight suit, hiding her crow’s-feet behind blue-tinted aviators. Standing beside her was a grey-haired Peggy Carter in a wheelchair held in place by Sharon – sunlight flares blurring her smile. The air force logo was stuck to the side of a jet in the background, his old nickname 'Snap Wilson' spray-painted on it.
Sam Flipped the photograph around to skim read the fine, cursive inscription: ‘Congrats on moving up, Snap. You'll be missed by the grunts at the bottom. Leave some target practice for us. And remember: one day at a time. C & S.’
"Well, I'll be damned. Hello, S..." Sam's nail scratched at a smudge on the corner of the photograph, it looked almost like a watermark stamp of the letter L. "What is--"
A shrill ringing sound came from his landline. He swivelled his head from side to side trying to spot the annoying thing. It was hiding under a stack of old newspapers that needed to be put in the recycling.
"He- Shit!" He almost tumbled on one leg. "Hello?"
"Sam? It's Bucky..."
***
Bucky shoved whatever useful supplies he could find lying about into a small backpack before slinging it over his shoulders and clipping it at the front of his chest -an old habit as it were.
Natasha walked in on him circling blind spots on a map with a marker, his face conveying devastation as if she'd just caught him in bed with another woman.
When Bucky didn't say anything, Natasha pointed to the training equipment peeking out from under her bed –their bed. "Training sessions. I forgot my knee pads." She picked them up, dusting them down. "You're leaving, aren't you?" Her tone was sad yet insightful.
Bucky was growing increasingly agitated as the seconds continued to count down on his watch, "I need to head over there!"
"James, stop! Last time you were on Hydra's radar that damned psychopath tore your arm off!"
He folded the map into his back pocket, "Stark?"
She threw her hands in the air, "No, Stark is the only reason you were fitted with a replacement! I'm talking about that monster that Hydra fished out of the ocean."
"Steve?" His tone went dark.
"Did you hit your head when you were chopping firewood yesterday? Yes, Steve. Of course, Steve!" Natasha smacked the side of his head with the knee pads.
Bucky strode past her, "You don't have to shout."
"Then stop acting like you were born yesterday!"
One of the foster kids witnessed their shouting and was ushered into another room by a worried-looking Pietro. Natasha swore in Russian before slamming their bedroom door shut, trapping Bucky inside with her.
He took her hands in his, "Look, I know I don't seem myself, but I have to get to New York. It's important. There's someone I swore to protect, no matter what and she's in danger now. I know you still care about the world, Na- Talia. These kids you're helping are evidence enough. Help me do this one thing and I promise everything will go back to normal."
Natasha sighed, "I haven't seen that look in your eye in a long time. Whoever it is must be important."
"More than you know."
"Where is she... your friend?"
"With Hydra. In New York."
"A prisoner?"
"Of sorts."
"New York huh?" Her eyes steeled with venomous conviction, her fingers twitching around the air between her fingertips and her scar. "I can think of a reason or two to tag along."
"No, I can't ask you to come with me, it's too dangerous, and the kids need you."
"You need me, liybimaya. It's like I told you all those years ago, the only thing powerful enough to separate us is death…" Her hand fell on his jaw, eyes searching his for something he couldn't give. "And even then, it wouldn't be enough."
Bucky sighed, finding himself instinctively leaning into her touch, "Okay, you win. But we have to stop somewhere first."
"Dge, Soldat?" her Russian trickled out.
"Missouri."
***
Knock. Knock. Knock
"I'm goin' as fast as I can, god damn!" Sam chewed his bottom lip as he clomped his way to the door.
Just as he was about to twist the doorknob, the door burst open and a supersonic boom shook the keys on the wall. A blue and silver streak whizzed past Sam's peripheral. Turning, he was pleasantly surprised to find Pietro eating a packet of crisps that he stole from the kitchen cupboard, feet kicked up as he surfed the channels. “Damn, that’s one fast kid. Like a friggin’ silver bullet.”
"Forgive him," Natasha urged. "Our TV hasn't been functional beyond the weather channel for days, he's forgotten his manners." She extended her hand, "Name's Natalia Romanova."
“Nat…” Sam's mouth remained open for a moment too long and her eyebrows rose up. Gathering his jaw off the ground, he clasped her hand with a loud smacking sound before nearly barking out his reply through a wide grin, "Sam Wilson. Pleasure to meet you."
"Samuel Wilson! I knew that name was familiar. You’re the pilot who crashed the prototype--" Natasha stopped herself mid-sentence.
Sam shrugged, "The very same apparently." He moved to the side to let her in.
Once in the kitchen, he noticed Bucky hadn't stopped staring at his leg, or rather the absence of it. "Take a picture, it'll last longer." He glowered. "If you thought your day was weird, mine was definitely worse."
"I can see that," Bucky cocked his head to the side.
“Coffee? I’m pretty sure it’ll give you tetanus from the rust but…”
“No, thanks.”
Bucky laid out the map from earlier on the kitchen table, his mind obsessing over his attack plan. Sam kept leaning over every now and again to catch a glimpse of Natasha and Pietro looking very much alive and real in the next room.
Curiosity got the better of him, "What's up with you and Nat?"
"It's Talia over here," Bucky's eyes remained glued to the blueprints. "And apparently we're together and I go by James."
"No shit?" Sam's tone took on a higher pitch, hands tucked under his pits. "I'm an alcoholic who lost a leg and you get paired up with Nat. Yeah, that's very fair," he grumbled sarcastically.
"Sam..."
"I know, I know, I'm focusing on the wrong thing. It's just I'm a little mad is all."
Bucky stopped hunkering over the table as he looked at Natasha and Pietro with an almost-longing stare, "It's weird, you know. The other Bucky has this full life here. He smiles in all his photographs, he wasn't brainwashed by Hydra. Hell, he's even raising kids with Talia and is like an older brother to Pietro. Despite how fucked up things are over here, his life seems fuller. He seems… better."
Bucky shook the thoughts from his head, dropping the permanent marker on the table, watching it roll without making an effort to stop it.
"Speak for yourself," Sam told him off. "This side's Sam is a mess. I practically woke up in my own vomit this morning."
"Jesus," was all Bucky gave him.
"Hang on, did you say you and Nat are raising kids together?"
"Mmm-hmm. We run a kids shelter in Canada. I train them in self-defence on Wednesdays and Fridays, and History and English every other weekday."
Sam laughed, using his crutch to poke Bucky's side, "Well, shit. Look at you. Mr Professor Barnes."
Pietro's pure laughter rippled out from the other room as he watched cartoons going about their usual tomfoolery. Something kept gnawing at Bucky's stomach, making him feel uneasy.
Sam scratched his cheek, "You alright there, Tin-can?"
"During the car ride over here, Talia kept reminiscing about our third year anniversary and how we spend a week on a luxury cruise aboard a blip –for some reason, they're the more acceptable form of travel here."
"I mean, it's not such a bad idea. Reduced carbon emissions-"
"That's what you're focusing on? Blips are filled with hydrogen. They explode!"
"Excuse me for finding a bright side in all this. In case you hadn't noticed, there's not much of that going around." Sam tapped on his leg, his eyes narrowing at Bucky.
“Christ on a cracker, must I spell it out?”
“Spell what out?”
“Three-year-anniversary,” Bucky waited for Sam to catch on.
“Oh Shit! Did you two…” He walked closer to Bucky to whisper-hum the wedding march.
Bucky groaned, “I don’t know. Maybe. It’s not exactly the easiest thing to bring up in polite conversation, besides she already suspects something is off with me… him… us? Whatever, you know what I mean.”
Sam chuckled, “Huh… that’s kinda ironic. You spent so long being afraid to propose to the girl you love, even though you have everything –security, shelter –and yet somehow, the guy with more to lose, is the one who was least afraid of being with the woman he loved.” He said, glancing over at Natasha.
As if on cue, the dark haired woman rose from the couch, a piqued expression taking over her features. “Okay, James. Enough with the whispering and the side-ways glances. I think I’ve given you two enough time to catch up. Now… what’s the plan?”
“Well…” Bucky tapped his metal finger on the red circled dot and delved into the details of his rescue plans.
“That won’t work,” Natasha said bluntly once he was done. “The only way you get into Hydra alive is if they bring you in.”
“Are you suggesting…?” Sam’s eyes widened.
“Yup.”
Pietro whooshed in from the couch, licking the crumbs from his fingers. “If we’re going after Hydra, we’ll need backup.”
“I agree,” Natasha replied as she pulled out her phone to dial a number.
“I don’t think the bol'shaya zhenshchina will be enough. I have a favour I can call in. Don’t wait for me.” Pietro added before zooming out of the house.
~Hydra HQ, NY
You marched into the interrogation room, the sound of muffled steel punches landing on a human jaw made you flinch. The doors opened automatically and a large molar flew across the room, knocked loose from the mystery man’s mouth. He laughed, staring down his interrogator with such conviction it made your skin erupt in goosebumps.
“Leave us,” you told the man wearing the knuckle duster.
He nodded curtly before spitting, “Terrorist scum!”
You dragged over a chair and sat on it, arms resting on the back support. “So, they tell me you got caught trying to cross the border patrols. Not very smart.”
“Oh, I don’t know, as plans go…” the man lifted his head so his striking blue eyes pierced through you, a satisfied smirk ghosting over his lips when he noticed you physically shudder. “It wasn’t so bad. After all, it brought me to you, didn’t it?”
Instantly, a migraine hammered against your cranium with the highest intensity yet, something about his presence, his voice, his eyes, undid every fibre of your being until all you felt was nausea bubbling up to the surface. You gripped the chair to steady yourself but the longer he stared at you, the worse everything got. You felt like you were being torn apart at the seams. In desperation, you hurried out of the room and raced towards a potted plant so you could relieve your stomach of its contents –though there wasn’t much left to throw up.
“Babe, are you alright?” Steve’s hand rubbed at your back as he kneeled next to you.
You huffed lifelessly, wiping the residue of puke from your mouth with your sleeve. Your chin quivered violently forcing your teeth to chatter. The sickly miasma of ozone clung to your nostrils as ghosts from another life encroached around you, and visible only to you from the fact that Steve wasn’t distressed in the least to see a very alive and well Wanda Maximoff laughing by a window -sunlight like fire on her red hair. Through the windows reflective surface, you saw him again, the ghost from the apartment and suddenly, you understood why the man in the interrogation room had shaken you to your core. It was him… the ghost, only he wasn’t a figment of your imagination. He was real too.
You grabbed onto Steve’s arms like they were the only thing keeping you from downing. “I think I’m losing my mind…”
Chapter Four: The Choice
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Kari’s MCU Summer Writing Challenge
Hi y’all. Summer is finally here so it’s time for a challenge. I chose to use a few different types of prompts this time. There are 15 word prompts, 15 songs and 15 dialogue prompts. You have to use your prompt. So if you pick a song or a word it’s not enough to mention it. You have to somehow focus the fic around the lyrics (you don’t have to quote them but use the theme) or the dialogue/word prompt. You only have to pick one prompt per fic and one pairing off the list. I hope you wanna play and have some fun with me this summer :D
Due Date: August 3rd, 2019
Word min: 500 words
Word Max: 6k words
Style: It can be a drabble, one shot or the beginning of a series. Do not put in in the middle of an ongoing series since I plan on reading them and don’t want to read 10 parts of something to understand the entry.
Fandom: MCU - mostly
Will you read and reblog my fic?
You betcha :D I am behind on reading for previous challenges so patience is a virtue here
When Do I Post?
Right now. Sign Ups start now and end when there are no more prompts or when the due date rolls around
Genre: Anything you want. You have to be over 18 if you write smut and you always have to warn accordingly! Fluff, angst, AUs, and crack are all welcome.
Limits on what you can write: No Mommy/Daddy kinks, no non/dub con, no A/B/O, no merpeople. No half animal anything, please. No mobster aus. No monster porn (this counts Venom and Hulk) No glorification on cheating (it’s okay as a plot device but use it with thought), no wife, s/o (even exes) or actor hate in rpfs! - if you got any questions at any time feel free to send me an ask,
NO BDSM INVOLVING BUCKY - NEITHER IN SHIPS OR READER INSERTS! PLEASE BE RESPECTFUL OF HIS PTSD! DON’T TURN HIS ARM INTO A KINK FOR ANYONE - IT’S A DISABILITY AND CONNECTED TO GREAT TRAUMA.
Format: State in your A/N that it is for my (until-theend-oftheline) Kari’s Summer Writing Challenge. And use the # Kari’s Summer Writing Challenge in the first 5 tags.
Pairing and word count also have to be easy to spot in your header!
Submit: After you posted on Tumblr you have to add yourself and your fic to this doc. If you don’t do this you will not be added to the masterlist I create when the challenge is over. If you got questions - just ask :D
Doc link it case Tumblr is an ass: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vuVYEHmpvOPtIa5X50d3VC9MOa-cPKWuSr2D33cVg8U/edit?usp=sharing
How do I join?
You pick a prompt and a pairing off the list. Then you go to this doc to sign up: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ll0w6MiJmS36RiYfEv8o03ICrRUyaG2xYM4szj7d4e0/edit?usp=sharing
If you got any problems let me know and I will sign you up manually. Any questions are welcomed via asks as well.
Prompts and pairings are under the cut.
Pairings
No male readers - gender neutral are fine otherwise female.
General Fics - character or rpf are both fine.
All genders, skin tones etc. OCs are welcome as well.
Sister/daughter/romantic/friendship reader pairings for following are all fine - just let me know which (I prefer romantic or friendship but no pressure):
Actors
Sebastian Stan
Chris Evans
Bradley Cooper
Chris Hemsworth
Robert Downey Jr.
Tom Hiddleston
Elizabeth Olsen
Tom Hardy
Characters
Bucky Barnes
Steve Rogers
Thor Odinson
Tony Stark
Wanda Maximoff
Sam Wilson
Brunnhilde/Valkyrie
Natasha Romanoff
Clint Barton
Wade Wilson
Eddie Brock (no monster porn please!)*
Ships (all are allowed as poly with reader too):
Stucky
Winterwitch
Winterwidow
Winterhawk
Winterfalcon
Sam x Clint (I don’t know their ship name)
Clintasha
Steggy
Thundershield
Thor x Valkyrie (also forgot the ship name)
Activity and word prompts
1 Heatwave
2 Barbeque
3 Camping
4 Bonfire
5 Stargazing
6 Skinny dipping
7 Painting the house
8 Breakfast on the roof
9 Sunburn
10 Water Fight
11 A/C broken
12 Hot summer night
13 Summer Rain
14 Thunderstorm
15 Icecream
Song Prompts:
16 Bonfire Hearts - James Blunt
17 Here Comes the Sun - The Beatles
18 Summertime Sadness - Lana Del Rey
19 Night Moves - Bob Seger
20 California Girls - Beach Boys
21 Long Hot Summer - Keith Urban
22 Sangria - Blake Shelton
23 Toes - Zac Brown Band
24 Malibu - Miley Cyrus
25 Drops of Jupiter - Train
26 The Script - Breakeven
27 Roses - The Chainsmokers
28 Adventure of a Lifetime - Coldplay
29 Avicii - Wake Me Up
30 Best Day of My Life - American Authors
Dialogue Prompts:
31 “What do you want me to do? Battle a shark and swim to shore?”
32 “I need a hug but I’m so hot I don’t want anyone to touch me!”
33 “The summer sun is not meant for boys like me. Boys like me belong in the rain”
34 “You’re hot!” “I know” “Not what I meant dumbass”
35 “I never thought I’d say this but put on a shirt before you burn
36 “I told you I’d save you a seat in hell”
37 “That’s not what I meant when I said we should have a bonfire!”
38 “Are you seriously going for a run in this heat?”
39 “If you throw me in I’ll kill you!”
40 “I think I am about to spontaneously combust”
41 “Ohmygod is that rain ever gonna stop?”
42 “Dude! That’s not what ice cubes are for!”
43 “Was that an explosion or thunder?”
44 “I think the surfboard just tried to kill me.”
45 “I always wanted a beach wedding”
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@awkwardfangirl2014 @dottirose
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Friday Five: This Is A Black Widow Post
I know a lot of people aren’t thrilled with Black Widow simply because of the actress that plays her. And while I agree that Scarlett Johansson shouldn’t have taken on some of the role she has in the past, robbing women of color of what could have been their big break, Black Widow is one of my favorite comic book characters. So, this week, in honor of her part of the Avengers: Endgame puzzle, my Friday Five is built around her.
That being said, there will be spoilers for Endgame here. I’ve managed to go a week without posting/reblogging anything other than images/gifs from trailers. I’ve got this tagged as “Endgame Spoilers,” so if you’ve read al of this and blown past the tags, and you get mad at me for being spoiled at that point, it’s on you. You’ve been warned.
Here we go.
Five: The Black Widow Movie
There is a Black Widow movie on the way. A script has been drafted, rewritten, and people have been cast. It’s supposed to start filming this year - June, in fact. It seems pretty clear at this point that it’s going to be a prequel. Rumors have everyone from Taskmaster to Yelena Belova appearing in it. But you know what would be great? A Red Room movie. An actual prequel set when Natalia Alianova Romanova ended up in the Red Room and became the Black Widow, giving an up and coming actress the chance at a big role. Instead, rumor has it set in the late 90s/early 2000s before the events of Iron Man take place. Here’s hoping we get to see Natasha recruited to SHIELD since she was an agent for about a decade before she made her MCU debut in Iron Man 2. I mean, I’d also love to see what happened on that oft-mentioned Budapest mission with Clint Barton too, but I won’t hold my breath on that one since Hawkeye is getting a Disney+ series and Black Widow gets a movie.
Four: Where Are The Other Black Widows?
One thing that has long bothered me about the MCU is that we never see evidence that other Black Widows exist. In the comics, Natalia ends up becoming one of the best students after a difficult start. Initially, she’s horrible at everything and the leaders are set to wash their hands of her. Thanks to a bored Enchantress (as in, from the Thor comics), she ends up trying to escape and showing how tough she really is. She doesn’t make it out, but the teachers and military officials see the potential in her and invest more time in her training. There are 29 other girls in her Red Room class though. And we know that, at the very least, the precursor to the Red Room exists in the MCU thanks to Agent Carter and Dottie Underwood. Now, I know that because she hasn’t been the focus of any movie yet, we haven’t learned a lot about her background. The only person who’s crossed paths with her in the present who she talked about seeing in the past was the Winter Soldier. Even the potential of their being another Black Widow out there hasn’t been addressed as an Easter egg, and I’m curious why not. Where are they? Is the MCU going to go the route of her having to kill everyone else to be considered a graduate of the program? If so, where’s the new generation? I have a lot of questions about the Black Widow program, clearly.
Three: She Couldn’t Walk Away
Okay, here is where the more spoilery stuff starts if you ignored my warning and kept reading. You’ve been warned again.
One of the things I loved that Endgame did is leaving Natasha as the one holding down the Avengers fort five years after the snap. Captain America is probably the one we all would have expected to be stubborn and not let go, right? Tony was able to build a new life, and Steve found a new way to help people. Everyone found a way to adapt to the new world they were living in, even if they didn’t like it. But Natasha, she decided to live at the Avengers compound and stay in contact with everyone - world government leaders and aliens alike - to make sure someone was still there to stop the bad guys. In the scene where she has a conference call with Okoye, Carol, Rhoadey, and Rocket you can tell she’s desperate for there to be something she can fight. She wants that earthquake (which is likely an Easter egg, but we’ll talk about that another time) to be something important. She wants to get her hands dirty. And I love that the woman who was a spy, who always followed orders, and who always found a way to sneak around the truth, is the one holding on tight to being an Avenger and not letting go. I love that even when Steve tells her that maybe they don’t need someone sitting in the compound and coordinating schedules, she can’t accept that. She’s finally something other than a spy in the narrative, and I think that’s a great note for her to go out on.
Two: It Had To Be Them
The teamups for the time travel portion of the movie were really interesting to me. Nebula and Rhoadey - both people who had machine parts to help them survive, but also both people with extensive combat experience and completely different personalities, out to stop a single thief. Rocket and Thor - likely paired up primarily for comic relief, but also because Rocket was probably the only one willing to handle Thor’s guilty conscience at that point since everyone else was on board with the plan, but Thor was still stuck in his depression with seemingly no way out. Captain America, Iron Man, Ant-Man, and Hulk - the most power heavy teamup, but also the one that had the most obstacles to get through is, of course, the one that not only loses a stone, but takes the long way around to get it again, and it’s also appropriate that Captain America and Iron Man get the biggest nostalgia filled trip.
Then, of course, the reason for me writing this at all is that they pair up Black Widow and Hawkeye for the sacrifice mission. I want to know how that was decided. Nebula knew that someone had to die at Vormir, even if she didn’t know all of the details. Did she look at this group of people and go, yeah, which part of this group loves one another the most, and suggest them? Did Natasha and Clint volunteer for this part of the mission when they heard there was murder involved because they have the most “red in their ledgers” at that point and thought they were going to kill someone else? Or did Natasha get paired with him because she was the only one willing to wait five years to find someone everyone else thought had become a serial killer? I want to know how that decision was made.
From a writing standpoint, of course, I know how that decision was made. No other teamup would have worked for Vormir. There is no one else in that group who has the relationship that Clint and Natasha have. At the point the movie takes place, they’ve known each other for at least 20 years. He recruited her instead of killing her. She saved him from being brainwashed. She was the only person he trusted to know his family before the events of Ultron. They were partners. Now, up until the reveal that Clint had a family, would I have thought they were romantic partners? Yep. But the two of them as platonic soulmates works for the events of the movies. Other than his family, Natasha is easily the person Clint cares about most in the whole world. He’s also the first person Natasha is able to think of as family, so I think it’s easy to say the reverse is true as well. No other members of the Avengers team left have that bond. The people they were bonded to (Rocket-Groot, Steve-Sam-Bucky, Nebula-Gamora, Scott-Hope, etc) were all gone. The sacrifice had to be one of those two characters. Once you know it’s them going to Vormir, you know one of them is stuck.
One: Can She Come Back?
The language regarding the Soul Stone is pretty deliberate. You’re exchanging a soul for a soul, giving up that which you love. There’s a lot of talk about the exchange not being undone, but… look, this is a comic book universe, and there’s definitely some wiggle room here. I mean, what happens when the Soul Stone is returned to the dominion of death? (Also, side note: How do we think Cap reacted to seeing the Red Skull was the one he had to return an Infinity Stone to? I would have liked to see that scene.) If the stone is returned, and this a soul is given back, shouldn’t one of the souls taken be released? Wouldn’t that make sense? Why couldn’t Cap, on his trip to return Mjolnir and the six stones, say, “hey, since I brought this back, can you give me something in return? I’m readily giving you this soul. Why don’t you go ahead and give me Natasha’s back?” It doesn’t lessen the sacrifice because Clint still was forced to let her go. In theory, he never used his Pym particles or time travel GPS to go back to 2023 since he decided to live out his new branched timeline life, but someone else could have. Or, you know, there could be a Natasha flying around in space for nine years hanging out with aliens. Or, maybe the Red Room cloned her like they did in the comics, and there’s someone other there with her memories walking around still living the spy life. Who knows?
That’s it for this week! Avengers: Endgame Easter eggs will hopefully go up at some point this weekend if you’re interested in them.
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Marvel Cinematic Universe: The Avengers (2012)
Does it pass the Bechdel Test?
No.
How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?
Three (23.07% of cast).
How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?
Ten.
Positive Content Rating:
Three.
General Episode Quality:
It’s solid. Unpopular opinion? I don’t think it’s half as good as people made it out to be, back when it first hit cinemas and everyone was swooning. It’s solid, but that’s the best I’ve got for it.
MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) UNDER THE CUT:
Passing the Bechdel:
...
Female characters:
Maria Hill.
Natasha Romanov.
Pepper Potts.
Male characters:
Nick Fury.
Phil Coulson.
Erik Selvig.
Clint Barton.
Loki.
Bruce Banner.
Steve Rogers.
Tony Stark.
JARVIS.
Thor.
OTHER NOTES:
‘free from freedom’ is such a wanky piece of writing, man. It’s absolute nonsense, but it sounds vaguely profound if you don’t think about it at all. I thought about it. It’s idiotic.
The very first thing we see of Black Widow in this movie is her being hit in the face, wearing a slinky little dress, tied to a chair being interrogated by a bunch of men. We’re supposed to indulge this excuse for hurting and objectifying a woman and then write it off as ‘empowering’ because she beats the Hell outta the dudes a couple of minutes later. That’s not a game I’m interested in playing. This is garbage.
The classical music over the beginnings of the Stuttgart attack is great.
All those German folks so confused by this Loki dude speaking English at them. What a tool.
I’m not sure I’ve ever heard ‘not today’ used as an effective badass declaration. It’s ALWAYS cheesy. Make it stop.
“There’s only one God, ma’am, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t dress like that.” I don’t really like this line for Steve; he just doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who would play the ‘one true God’ card, and there was nothing in his origin story which implied that he’s particularly attached to religion at all; plus, he already read the brief on Thor, he knows this is literally the old Norse deity, there’s no question of whether or not they’re dealing with a God here. To argue the point (because he’s not MY God!) is meaningless in context, and feels like a weak attempt to correlate (Christian) faith with being ‘old-fashioned’, like OF COURSE Steve would defend the idea of the ‘one true God’, he’s from the past, not a cool enlightened atheist/agnostic modern man like the rest of us, right?
Thor and Loki are using such archaic phrasing, when Tony makes his ‘Shakespeare in the Park’ joke, it’s...more an observation than a quip. The Asgardians were not half as stuffy in Thor. It makes it seem like someone didn’t bother to see that movie first before writing their version of the characters.
Thor has to fight with the others when he shows up. He’s just gotta.
Gotta give a nod to Mark Ruffalo’s work here; I feel like I can see the clear comparison between his version of the character and Edward Norton’s in The Incredible Hulk, but at the same time there’s no sense of this being a Norton’s-Banner impression. Ruffalo is doing a sweet job of making the character his own without totally overhauling the template Norton laid down, and I dig it.
Oh, here we are. Loki calls Black Widow a ‘mewling quim’, which is just a fancy way of calling her a whiny cunt. Your gendered slur is still a gendered slur, movie.
I know they’re playing the idea that the sceptre is causing the antagonism between the characters, but fuck, it’s tedious. It just feels like they’re all contrived petty versions of themselves, being shitty because it’s ~dramatic~ for them to not get along.
I didn’t see this movie until months after it was released, and people were raving about how crushed they were by the major character death in the film but they were doing a pretty good job of not spoiling it; good enough that for a moment, I really thought I’d get to enjoy the surprise/horror for myself. You know who spoiled it for me? In a tweet, no less? It was the 44th President of the United States. Thanks, Obama.
This guy is the MVP of this film:
You can chalk “Son, just don’t,” up on the list of Things Steve Rogers Would Not Say. Just because he’s technically in his nineties doesn’t mean he isn’t still in his twenties in his mind: I don’t buy that he’d go for a blithely patriarchal term like ‘son’, it seems like another poorly-considered attempt to make him sound old-fashioned. Juxtapose that with ‘just don’t’, which is very modern vernacular. It might seem clever to combine the two as a meta-expression of Steve belonging to two different times now, but in practical application it just sounds out-of-character, and there’s nothing clever about that.
I know I said after the last movie that I love it when someone gets hit and flies off-screen in an exaggerated fashion, but Hulk punching Thor off-screen after they finish working together to take down the big beastie is an exception, because there’s no reason for Hulk to decide to hit Thor in the first place, it’s just a gag for the sake of a gag. I can’t believe they messed up such a simple pleasure.
I will forgive it, in return for Hulk smashing Loki all over the place. That was funny.
Back when this movie came out, before I saw it, I had people tell me - straight-faced, totally sincere - that it was one of the best movies they had ever seen. The internet was on fire with Avengers love. The film was rated in the IMDb Top 20. Admittedly, that all sets a pretty impossible standard for a movie to meet, and being at least a little disappointed in the result is probably a given. I was not particularly invested either way (I didn’t fall down the Marvel rabbit hole until later), so I didn’t allow myself to go in to my first viewing with such lofty expectations to be crushed, just the general assumption that this was gonna be good, it had to be good, at minimum. And it was that; it’s a good film. It’s entertaining. The plot makes basic essential sense. It’s easy to follow. There are some nice visuals, and most of the special effects are relatively clean, which can be a significant difficulty for big-budget extravaganzas that sometimes/often try to get way too much spectacle bang for their buck, so, a nice win. All in all, The Avengers is not a bad film. Sure is a bland one, though.
I know, I know, getting all these big-name characters from previous films together in one movie was a serious task and it’s hard to write a well-balanced script for so many leads, blah blah. Let’s put that whole equivocation to bed right now, because I honestly don’t think that balancing the big-name cast was the problem. All of the characters had something to do, no one felt like a random extra, I could quibble about certain places where I really wish things had been plumped up a bit (pretty much everywhere - the film is extremely low on meaningful character beats), but ultimately the characters are fairly evenly presented. What makes this movie bland to me is 1) the way that the personalities of the characters deviate from that established in their previous films, and 2) the simplicity of the story they inhabit.
We’ll cover the Avengers themselves first: the good news is, Tony Stark is still Tony Stark. His personality is intact. Bruce Banner is, as noted, not exactly the Bruce Banner we met back in The Incredible Hulk, but that’s both a given and a good thing - the casting change is an improvement. Hawkeye was barely in the MCU previously, so we don’t really have enough to compare him against in order to make a judgment. Black Widow, however, is a bit of a mess; Joss Whedon’s special brand of misogyny is on display from moment one, as noted above (he LOVES writing women being brutalised because ‘how would we know/believe that they’re strong if we don’t get to see them overcoming mistreatment?’ - he tends not to feel the need to ‘prove’ his male characters’ strengths in this way), and Natasha’s personal story for the movie continues in a distinctly gendered vein: as is common for female characters being written by shitty dudes, her arc revolves predominantly around a man (Hawkeye), and she is ‘emotionally compromised’ by her attachment to him. She also zones out in the middle of an action scene and winds up in a corner shaking and traumatised (very out-of-character for a super spysassin), and particular emphasis is placed on all the bad things she’s done in the past and how she should feel bad about it, though no one does more than shrug their shoulders about Clint or Fury or any of the other SHIELD agents who are acknowledged as having dark and dirty pasts. Why is Natasha the one who is singled out to have her morality judged while her ‘arc’ focuses on her inconvenient emotional engagement? You know why. There’s no reason why this particular tack had to be taken in bringing her backstory into the film, and as a result of it we spend little time with Black Widow displaying the kind of cool professionalism and self-assurance she had in Iron Man 2. The inclusion of that vulnerability and backstory doesn’t make her feel more rounded or complicated because it is deconstructing the power and mastery of the character; rather than building upon the foundation set in her previous film visit, we’re questioning the stability of that foundation and seeing if we can get a few pieces of the structure to rattle loose.
A big part of the trouble for Thor is that he gets saddled with that poxy Ye Olde Cliche dialogue, and there are few things worse for achieving character consistency than changing the way that they talk: no matter how hard the actor tries to play the character the same, they can’t compensate for the fact that the very structure of their sentences has been remodeled. They can improvise rephrasing the lines and/or argue the point if they want, but it’s hard to challenge every line, and if the director (who, oh look, is also the writer) insists you follow the script verbatim, there’s not a lot you can do with that. Poor Captain America suffers the same fate with the overt attempts to make him sound ‘old-fashioned’ by having him utter words and phrases that he never used in his origin movie. What’s worse is, this stilted dialogue is pretty much the sum total of the film’s acknowledgment of the fact that, oh yeah, Steve just recently woke up from the ice to find that seventy years has passed and nearly everyone and everything he used to know is gone. He has an exchange with Fury in his first scene, about ‘getting back in the world’, but there’s zero follow-up on how he’s handling it, what difficulties there might be, or even just how Steve is feeling about all of this on a basic emotional level. And yes, I am aware that there’s a deleted montage of Steve going about his day being isolated and out-of-touch, and it’s a travesty that they cut it because that’s essential character content, but it’s also a total bare minimum which has zero follow-up. Steve Rogers spends the whole film just being...there, speaking lines that don’t suit him or reflect the personality we just saw in The First Avenger, and not even in an understandable character-development ‘throwing myself into my work to hide from the pain’ kind of way. He’s kinda blandly self-righteous and all-business no-pleasure in exactly the way he was NOT in his origin movie; my impression is that Whedon doesn’t care for the character and wrote him off as the traditional patriotic cliche one might have expected him to be instead of the nuanced character that he actually is. As with Thor and Loki, it feels as if Whedon didn’t bother to watch the previous movies first in order to get a sense of the established characters.
Speaking of Loki: if there’s one character who really, REALLY suffered a personality change in this script, it’s him. None of what made Loki the highlight of Thor is in evidence here; where that character was a cunning plotter full to overflowing with complex and contradictory feelings for his family and driven to action by that same emotional cascade, this Loki...wants to rule the Earth. Because. He’s, like, crazy, the other characters all say so, even Thor - the only one who actually knows Loki and is fit to assess his mental state - says that his ‘mind is far astray’ (what Thor thinks of that, whether he’s surprised or concerned, whether he feels like he understands why this has happened to Loki or not, is unclear, because, I dunno, Thor having feelings is as inconvenient to the story as Steve having feelings - as Loki snarls derisively about ‘sentiment’, we must remember that being emotionally compromised is dumb and only for women? Hmm). Loki is just a placeholder villain in this film, driven to action by nothing in particular, it’s just a business arrangement with a mysterious third party that coincidentally happens to involve Earth. Loki prattles and hollers a lot about how ruling is his right and people want to be ruled and blah despot blah, and it’s both supremely uninspired, and not true to the character we met in Thor at all - the Loki we know was not obsessed with ruling, his motivations were all about his family standing and the things he was denied within those relationships and their implications. I remember fandom, back when this movie came out, scrambling with various headcanons about Loki losing his mind in the void or being brainwashed, ad nauseum, because no one really seemed to feel like they were watching a logical progression of the same character at all.
Now, one of the main ways that the lack of character consistency contributes to narrative blandness is that it disrupts narrative immersion - we’re re-negotiating the way that we engage with the characters, and that distracts from engaging with the story itself. At worst, we may even find ourselves cynical about every decision that a character makes (whether it’s in-character or not), because we’re too aware of the man behind the curtain to buy the act. There are definite shades of that in this film, but the worst of it comes from the whole team-antagonism schtick that is vaguely blamed on ‘Loki’s manipulations’ and the sceptre. The thing is, this all requires the characters to behave out-of-character, and since they mostly already are out-of-character due to bad writing, the exacerbation of that by creating artificial conflict feels like more bad writing, not actual plot. Having the characters initially get along poorly before triumphantly uniting to win the day is such an overused device, it’s easy to construe the conflict as arbitrary, and as it turns out...it is. Loki/the sceptre causing the Avengers to argue doesn’t actually impact the narrative in any meaningful way, since they don’t start a fight or fracture over it, it doesn’t slow down Tony’s efforts to learn what Fury is really up to, nor does it prevent Steve from investigating the same thing in person. Them conflicting with Fury and questioning their decision to work with SHIELD, etc, is a normal thing to have an argument about, no magic-mind-stick required; the only mileage the movie really gets out of the forced-conflict ploy is that Steve and Tony keep pissing on each other, which is extremely OOC for nice-guy Steve and WOULD throw up a big red flag for mental manipulations if the movie weren’t already misrepresenting him as an insufferable stick in the mud anyway, and even for Tony it feels off - he’s generally a jerk as a rule, but he doesn’t pick unprovoked fights - but again, when the movie is already so left-of-centre on so many characters everyone feels off, so it’s easy to assume the characters are just falling victim to contrived drama, and not something in the actual story. As noted, it doesn’t end up mattering where the conflict comes from anyway; the bad news is, it takes until the halfway point of the Goddamn movie before the characters get their prescribed ‘rough patch’ out of the way. The fact that they were just being really annoying for no real reason and without narrative consequence kinda steps on the idea of it being ‘triumphant’ when they all come together at the end to fight Loki, because there was zero reason for the audience to ever legitimately doubt that it would happen, not even in a begrudging-putting-this-genuine-disagreement-aside-so-that-we-can-save-the-world kind of way. It’s just dead air with no weight behind it, and with characters reduced to such cliche versions of themselves that it’s hard to muster the will to care.
AND SO, we have a movie which, as previously noted, is awfully damn simplistic. That’s not a terrible thing, in and of itself - it’s all about what you do with an idea, and I would posit that a more complicated plot wouldn’t be a great idea here since there are so many primary moving parts in the form of characters to justify. But, the aforementioned griping about the skewy characterisation makes this film a bad candidate for character-over-plot, and if the shenanigans are falling flat, that’s when simplistic plotting becomes a problem. It goes like this: Loki shows up and steals the magic cube (action ensues). The avengers assemble to catch Loki (action ensues). The characters argue on a helicarrier until Loki’s goons show up to wreck shit (action ensues). Loki escapes and goes to New York to use the magic cube to portal an alien army to Earth. Action ensues until the portal is closed and Loki is defeated. The end. I’m not complaining about the action - it’s a standard facet of the genre, and most of it is entertaining enough (though the unnecessary Thor/Iron Man fight I coulda done without, and the battle of New York runs a bit long) - but the plot itself is pretty point-A-to-B-to-C without much in the way of surprises, and like I said, that’s fine so long as you’re delivering in another arena, i.e. STRONG CHARACTER NARRATIVES. And character is sooo far from being this film’s strong suit. The result? Is not very compelling.
It tends to wind up that, by the time I get to the end of explaining why I think a thing didn’t work (and this is...the abridged version), it maybe seems ridiculous that I’m also saying ‘this thing isn’t that bad’. The truth is, there’s nothing that I think this movie does impressively well, and there are a lot of pretty major things that I think were poorly handled. BUT, I still meant what I said: it’s entertaining. It makes at least basic sense, and flows easily enough. And while I have serious issues with a lot of the characterisation and feel that - though balanced(ish) in handling - the plot failed to take real advantage of any of the character resources at its disposal (except maybe Tony), the actors still brought the goods to the table, and those whom I enjoyed in their previous films (I mean you, Chris Evans) didn’t disappoint, even though the material they were handling did. It’s a solid film, it’s good fun, I don’t regret watching it, and while I am irritated by various aspects, I don’t feel the need to keep ranting about them. And hey; Mark Ruffalo is really very wonderful. They’ve got that going for them.
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i’ve always wanted to be an actor. on a stage, on a set, a screen - the WHERE didn’t matter to me as much as the WHAT. as a child, i got the feeling that shows were put on for me, that the little people in the tv saw me and said, ‘today, zack & wheezy, we’re gonna tell a story about carnivals, just for dean’. don’t ask me why i thought i’d want to watch half the things i did as a child; i thought that if steve & blue are gonna solve the beach mystery then there MUST be a reason i was a part of it.
as i grew out of the cartoon worlds and into the ‘real’ ones of indiana jones and star trek i noticed more about the directions of a scene & the tone of it. not that i knew those terms or concepts at the time; i wasn’t that snobby ten-year-old watching spy kids and scoffing at the wide-angled lens during a comedic beat or the shot of a punchline. i didn’t know that comedy was supposed to be done in close-ups but i did realise that seeing jokes from a distance made them less funny.
don’t get me started on laugh tracks. those things irk me so much i cringe just thinking about them (cringes, i later learned, have a different way to convey emotion to a viewer) - if an audience has to be queued when to laugh or cry or ‘oh-no-they-didn’t’ then is the scene convincing at all?
i get too sidetracked by those types of thoughts, which is probably why i’d be a terrible writer in addition to failing every single audition i’ve ever had. i can try & blame it on bad scripts or scene partners but the truth is i’ve always known i couldn’t do it. hell, i was too shy as a toddler to sing hello at circle time, too timid of a five-year-old to walk across the tiny classroom & accept a certificate, too self-conscious of my seven-year-old body to think of myself in any positive light.
nonetheless, i am an actor. every morning i get up at the ass-crack of dawn, get my coffee from the fridge & drink it with a straw so i don’t mess with my lips before makeup and hair, dress in casual jeans & tees before getting in to work to visit wardrobe. i sit in my chair, look over my call sheet, review my lines for the day (or at least my times, if it’s gonna be one of those ‘just show up and be present in the background’ type of days), talk shit about the crew before heading out the trailer door.
that’s right: set. i’ve made it. i’m an actor, on a set, ready to perform for the world (or at least for the day, the director and mike operators and the rest of those guys). i can almost guarantee that no one’s ever seen my work in entirety, with the exceptions of those who’ve worked on the projects.
oh, so you’re in indie films that can’t even make it to festivals, you might think, and you wouldn’t be entirely incorrect.
truth is, i don’t even do independent work. i don’t do commercials for stupid pet clothing. i don’t appear in spots for toothpaste. i don’t do voice work, as an announcer or character. i’m not even an extra, but i am an actor.
i, dean barton, am an actor.
every day, i wake up from my mattress on the floor, roll onto my feet, and get ready to act as if my life depends on it. which from a certain point of view, it does.
i spend hours each morning anxiously ruminating about the day’s events and allow myself, for those four hours, to sit (read: wallow) in doubts & fears and think of my ways out of them. i allow myself hours to prepare how to dress, how to walk, how to behave, how to talk, how to ACT in the world. some days i have those dreaded queue cards, other days a notebook full of chicken scratch masquerading as a healthy way to process emotions through writing. and yeah, some days, makeup and hair is a must, although i’ve recently fallen back into my ‘zero mirrors’ phase so that’s become... stressful, to say the least. as for the crew, the cast?
people who i’ve never met, yet have interacted with via the magical realm of webs (colloquially referred to as the internet) for the past few years. we’re all in different time zones, which makes this whole social anxiety and insomnia thing kinda convenient and useful for once. talking with people is so much easier when you only have to text, never hear each other’s voices, never have to see them, and you are unsure of who they are. they can be anyone, and so can i.
once my dismal level of confidence has risen to a socially acceptable level of interaction ability, i change out of my casual, makeup covered and tear smudged clothing, into whatever costume i need for the day. if i have to go to the university or the bank, i gotta wear a button-down with actual pants; if it’s errand day then the casuals are just fine.
acting is exhausting. getting into character isn’t terrible, but STAYING in one all day - that’s hell. sometimes i forget who i am and slip into a different one, the wrong one, midway through a task. when i get to the bus & start my commute, i have to get in the head-space of Davis, an accomplished, self-motivated grad student who is ready to kick ass, take names, and get shit done. by the time i start class, Davis is ready to participate and keep track of his notes (something i could never manage). the commute back, Davis is gone and Don is a weary-eyed sales rep on his way back from a downtown office. Don’s ready to sink into the sofa & remain there for several hours, unmoving.
luckily dean kicks back in and balances the two out, allowing me to sit on the sofa & relax for an hour before dinner and essays about the fall of russia and history of the radio.
sometimes Davis stays longer, although he never feels like he outstays his welcome. Don, on the other hand - that guy’s invasive and has no understanding of the word ‘boundaries’.
i know, this sounds crazy. I sound crazy, being dean & Davis & Don (& Dee, but that bitch is mostly gone). i’m not crazy. well, i’ve been diagnosed, but nothing personality-wise. i don’t PHYSICALLY manifest myself or see Davis & Don outside of myself or in the mirror; i know i’m just me & i’m just dean.
it’s just that sometimes, dean isn’t enough. sometimes, dean doesn’t remember how to get dressed or make small-talk or smile, or how to relax or find his wallet or what the shower is. sometimes, dean needs other people in his life, except dean has no life & no people.
i know, the speaking-in-third-person is weird, and the bleakness isn’t helping. whatever. it’s true. i have online buddies, and as much as i connect with them, i can’t help but wonder if we’d be friends IRL. i go to university, and see the same faces in class with me; occasionally we chat but past ‘hey can I borrow that book’ and ‘yeah last night’s game was wild’ i got nothing.
as for family, well, i don’t really have one of those either. mom died popping me out, dad never forgave me for it, so one day he ‘forgot’ to pick me up from school, and ten-year-old me had no bus money or phone or way to make it back to the apartment (an hour drive would be an eternal walk) so ten-year-old me slept in the school’s gym for a bit. ten-year-old Davis & Don & Dee lived there as well. eventually i got put into a home, which is how i was able to land a job & get a scholarship to the local university. it’s not like twenty-three-year-old me can go back to Blue Birch and make a request - they already found me a rep and a rent-controlled room.
being dean is difficult, but being Davis or Don or anyone else is equally trying. imagine learning how to ride a bike and then go full throttle on a harley, being told there’s no difference & no chance of crashing. just because i know vaguely how to be dean doesn’t mean i know how to be Davis or Don or anyone else. even though i should be the one in control of me, i’m not.
i’ve always wanted to be an actor, but now that i’ve been acting most of my life i’m not sure this is the right path for me. i hate having to spend the majority of my time as not-me and have my time be someone else’s, even if that someone else is technically me.
i’ve always wanted to be an actor, but now that i am, i wish i could have wished away that desire as a child. i wish i could go back to little dean and tell him, “buddy, you might not be the best, or okay-est person, or even the best or okay-est version of you. dean-o, buddy, listen: you’re YOU, and that’s the most awesome thing you can be. be YOU. be Dean Fuckin’ Barton. try to be happy, pretend to be okay if that’s what the situation calls for and gets you through it, but remember this: you’re not an actor. you’re not a character living out a role. you’re DEAN.”
i can’t go back in time, but i can say this to myself now while sitting in my makeup chair at five a.m and look into the mirror for the first time in weeks.
I am Dean Fuckin’ Barton, and I am living MY story.
I am Dean Fuckin’ Barton, and I am ME.
---
[stories from pages
1/?]
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Heavyweight advice for the PMO
CABINET MAKING 101 — Prime Minister TRUDEAU and his Chief of Staff KATIE TELFORD have 3 priorities as they begin to put together a cabinet: Meet the team, consider other Rolodexes and reach across the aisle. So says HUGH SEGAL, a chief of staff to Davis and Mulroney.
Segal, a senior adviser with Toronto-based law firm Aird and Berlis LLP who was appointed to the Senate by former prime minister PAUL MARTIN, retired from the upper chamber in 2014. He tells Playbook that when a government returns with a minority, “before you start worrying about how you fill the cabinet spaces, you really have to worry about the mindset of your own caucus.”
No. 1 — Meet the team: The priority after a minority election result, in Segal’s view, is to schedule time for the prime minister to meet with Liberal members of the caucus, in small groups, to get their view on what’s really important.
“If you don't do that, when you've had an election which was successful but perhaps not as successful as everybody hoped, you could find yourself in some challenging circumstances very quickly,” he said.
Memorial University professor ALEX MARLAND noted in his book “Whipped: Party Discipline in Canada,” that Trudeau’s celebrity is a factor in his “lack of anxiety about caucus support combined with his considerable success as a leader" — which "explains his reduced compulsion to engage in meaningful caucus outreach.”
Personal access is hard fought for backbenchers. It took until the SNC-Lavalin affair in spring 2019 for the PMO to improve outreach with Liberal MPs after creating a caucus relations office to do just that.
— From Marland’s book: While Trudeau’s father held rotating lunches with a handful of MPs, JEAN CHRÉTIEN opted for bigger lunches with approximately 15 members a couple times a month; same with Martin, who invited ministers and MPs for relaxed meals and dined with colleagues weekly in the House lobby. STEPHEN HARPER, Marland wrote, had Conservative committee members over for meals at 24 Sussex.
No. 2 — Consider other peoples’ Rolodexes: The Liberals’ electoral priorities focused on climate, crime and housing, which Segal said are files “profoundly in the provincial jurisdiction.” Before giving serious thought to who would lead the charge on those issues in a cabinet, Segal said he would consider potential changes to the senior public service first, including deputy ministers and heads of agencies.
“You have to be certain that the deputy ministers who are going to be in charge of execution are deputy ministers who have good relationships in the provinces with their counterparts — and who can work those relationships to find joint ways of achieving the commitments which the government has made,” he said.
No. 3 — Reach across the aisle and share power: When Bill Davis was handed a minority in 1977, Segal was on his staff. That was the year the provincial government produced a joint legislative planning committee with a role for opposition parties. It is an idea for Trudeau and Telford to consider, Segal said, specifically to "move forward to get the pandemic addressed.”
He suggested Liberals de-escalate any pandemic brinkmanship by meaningfully working with the Conservatives, Bloc Québécois, NDP and Greens.
“That one initiative would send a very powerful message to the opposition parties and to the country. If the opposition party said, ‘We do not want to help, we are not going to be part of it," that is their problem,” Segal said.
TIME-IS-A-FLAT-CIRCLE TRIVIA — As noted by TVO’s STEVE PAIKIN, Trudeau was 6 years old in 1977 when he crossed paths with Davis while attending a Grey Cup game in Montreal with his father.
FROM OTTAWA TO TAMING HORSES — Former Mulroney chief of staff DEREK BURNEY chatted with Playbook from Colorado, updating us on his new job title: ranch hand. The ex-Canadian ambassador to the United States helps his sons look after horses.
“The most important objective for a minority government is cohesion,” he said. The simplest way to develop cohesion? Develop three to four priorities.
That was the plan for Harper's transition team when the Conservative leader won a minority in 2006. Burney was at that table. "He came got here out of an election with a big platform… whittled it down so the caucus and cabinet would understand that they had five things that they needed to get done. And it gave everybody a sense of purpose in the early days.”
— Don’t shut Conservatives out: Because the Conservatives won the popular vote, Burney suggested the Liberals need to resist the temptation to treat the opposition as cannon fodder. He said whenever the Liberals reach out to the NDP because the party is a natural ally, it wouldn’t be smart to exclude Conservatives from that dialogue.
“This was not a very profound election, let me put it that way,” Burney said. “It did not settle much, it did not sell anything. I think the country is pretty fragmented politically. So I would make an extra effort at dialogue with the opposition parties to at least show that there was an attempt to find common ground.”
Burney agrees with Segal that establishing some sort of pandemic panel would be a smart move, but he suggested removing politicians from being involved. “I think you have to take it out of the hands of the politicians and appoint an independent blue-ribbon panel of experts, not just medical… there are a lot of issues, I think, that need to be addressed.”
— Getting it done is number one: The veteran insider said the first few months of a minority government are critical in that it is important to not overload the agenda or risk getting into a rut that you can’t escape.
“The first thing the government has to do is … it has to show it can get something done,” Burney said. “That's the most important objective of all: getting something done. That was the title of my memoir, by the way. I hope you read it.”
Ensuring caucus cohesion is fundamental to ensuring a government has a better chance of implementing policy, Burney said, especially in the current circumstance for Liberals. “The caucus is more important in a minority than it ever is in a majority.”
HOME AT LAST — Ottawa snapped to attention late Friday on word that MICHAEL KOVRIG and MICHAEL SPAVOR had departed Chinese airspace. The Canadians were detained by Chinese authorities since Dec. 10, 2018.
Kovrig and Spavor were arrested, charged and eventually put on trial for crimes against the state, all of which were roundly dismissed by virtually every Western expert as payback for Canada's arrest of Huawei CFO MENG WANZHOU pending extradition to the United States. Hours after Meng was freed as part of a deferred prosecution deal with the Americans, the Two Michaels were Canada-bound.
Shortly after arriving in Toronto, Kovrig joined his wife VINA NADJIBULLA and sister ARIANA for an interview with Global's MERCEDES STEPHENSON from Ariana's porch. They were short and sweet. Kovrig, whose voice most Canadians were hearing to for the first time after seeing a handful of the same photos for more than 1000 days, was running on two hours of sleep.
"I just need to say thank you very much to all Canadians for the enormous support. And all the effort that so many people have made to help bring Spavor and me home. It was really moving. And knowing that so many people knew about the situation, cared about the situation, really helped us get through a very difficult time."
— Credit where it is due: Trudeau thanked "every single person and partner around the world who helped secure their release." DAN LAUZON, Foreign Minister MARC GARNEAU's chief of staff, gave a shoutout to his boss. UN ambassador BOB RAE credited the "disciplined, focused, patient, persistent skill of DOMINIC BARTON and KIRSTEN HILLMAN," the two envoys closest to the file. KATHLEEN DAVIS, a senior foreign policy adviser to Trudeau, added PMO senior global affairs advisor PATRICK TRAVERS to the list, along with Telford and former foreign minister FRANÇOIS-PHILIPPE CHAMPAGNE.
— China blinked first: Hillman told CTV News that as Meng's legal fight in North America was winding down, Chinese officials initiated conversations about releasing Kovrig and Spavor: "I think the Chinese government decided that, you know, it was time to put this behind them and move on.”
THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY — That's how busloads of wistful Conservatives will think of BRAD WALL, the prominent western Tory not named STEPHEN HARPER still revered by the party's sprawling voter coalition. Wall sat down with DAVID HERLE for an hour-long chat on the Herle Burly podcast.
The former Saskatchewan premier reflected on the O'Toole campaign, laid out a blueprint for how Conservatives can beat Liberals on guns and climate change, and bluntly assessed the state of the federation. Some key takeaways:
— The missing question: "I still don't know what ERIN O'TOOLE's ballot question was, other than 'We're not that guy" -- even though he had a full and credible platform. I think the campaign came down to that in the end."
— How to win the gun debate: The federal campaign turned the moment JUSTIN TRUDEAU went after O'Toole's gun policy for several days -- withering attacks that forced the Tories to edit their own platform. Wall argued Conservatives need their own their own ideas.
"Rather than react to the Liberals, Conservatives need to say, "Here are the kinds of guns that are used as tools in this country, or for hunting. We're going to be about protecting the right of people to own those. We've got a lot of guns laws now that protect the citizenry from a profusion of long guns or handguns," he told Herle. "I would try to avoid always playing on the Liberals' turf. They define everything."
— How to win the climate debate: Walls says the Liberal emission-reduction targets dominate any conversation about Canada's role in fighting climate change. He would try to flip the script.
"[Canada generates] 2.6 percent of global emissions. We're 2.6 percent of global emissions. I would say it over and over and over again. And then use it as a criticism of the Liberal plan," he said. "The Liberal plan is not just about pricing carbon but that is the heart and center of it. This is all you have to offer? This myopia about one third of 2.6 percent of global emissions? That is weak sauce. It's not good enough for Canada."
Wall insisted that Canadians could think bigger, developing world leading carbon capture and storage technology and substantially lowering the cost of nuclear energy.
— On Saskatchewan's place in the federation: Wall says the Senate does not properly represent his province's interests, leaving the House of Commons to do all the governing. "We're looking at having not very much influence in that representation by population de facto unicameral government that makes policies for the whole country. I do not think it is a particularly good federation, frankly … I do not mean to be too negative or depressing, but I cannot see this ever changing."
— How's his French? "It's terrible. It does not exist." Wall has probably declined to run for the federal Conservative leadership more than any other potential candidate since Harper stepped down in 2015. He'd be an instant frontrunner. But do not expect an insurgent bid any time soon. Never might actually mean never for the son of Swift Current.
START THE CLOCK — The Toronto Star's ALTHIA RAJ reports that LORRAINE REKMANS, the president of the Green Party's federal council, yesterday initiated a leadership review process. Voting will start Oct. 25, with a general meeting scheduled for Nov. 26.
ANNAMIE PAUL will hold a press conference this morning at Toronto's Suydam Park. The advisory included extremely specific latitude and longitude coordinates: 43°41'21.5"N 79°24'53.7"W, for the record.
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Don`t judge the book by it`s cover
Romanogers Appreciation Week 2017 Feb 9th
Prompt: Pancakes and freedom
Natasha is inspiring writer who looking for a producer to publish her book. She had gone to several companies, but nobody give her a chance. Until Clint her best friend who is a popular actor introduced her to his boss, CEO of Marvel Production Steve Rogers. She was thrilled but Rogers is not easy to please.
Natasha walks out from a huge office building Manhattan. She feels so angry, the company director not even give her a chance. He is not even looks at her manuscript. She was rejected by five companies. But she never gives up her dream to become a novel writer.
“You`re not talented”
“Your writing is dull and boring”
“Instead, why don`t we talk about your friend Clint Barton? Are you guys dating?”
This is all the script she heard every time she tries to submit her work. She waiting for a taxi until someone stole her taxi. Everything is a disaster for her. It`s end her day terribly.
Then she receive a call
“Hey Natalie”
“Clint how many times I told you don`t call me with that name!”
He is laughing
“Chill Nat. What are you doing?”
“I`m submit my script to DC production. They say I should look for another job.”
Clint is laughing again
“Nat, are you tried to send you work again? I thought you give up this a long time ago”
“Nope I never give up. I quit my job for this.”
“Ok. Do you need my help?”
Natasha face turns happy
“Oh my god Clint! You are going to help me?? Because I trying to ask for your help for whole year!”
“Sorry all right I`m very busy. So I will arrange the appointment with him tomorrow. 9.00 In morning. He hates someone late. Come to Marvel Production tomorrow and ask the secretary to met Mr. Rogers. Don`t fall for him”
Natasha giggles like a little girl. “Love you Clint”
Tomorrow she rides a public train wearing a flower dress to met Mr. Rogers.
The office is huge. It was nicely decorated. A brunette with long legs wearing a black suit welcomed her.
“My name is Maria Hill. I`m Mr. Rogers’s secretary. He will see you inside”
Steve Rogers CEO
Natasha nervously knocked the door.
“Come in!”
“Hello my name is Natasha Romanoff”
“Have a seat Miss Romanoff”
“Natasha”
“All right”
He not the way she imagined he was. Clint had told her about his boss. She never thought him so young and incredibly handsome. He was perfect in everywhere, tall frame, he had deep eyes, fair skin and lips that was so red, she wanted to kiss it. She always imagines Clint boss is old men with less hair, wearing huge glasses.
She shows him her script. And he read it. He turns pages to pages very quickly. He circles every word he did not like. His cringe hard when he read the last chapter. He put the script harshly on the table. He is not happy. Clearly.
“What are you trying to tell?”
“Is about a women who had terrible life and stranded in an island”
“You have no story to tell. I don`t know what should I call this. Your writing is a mess. Is all over the place!”
“I`m sorry, but I can fix this”
“You know what, I can offer a better option for you” He picks up the script and throw it to the trash can. She in shocked.
“That`s where it should belong. To the trash can”
Natasha never feels so humiliated in her life. Her face turns red. She is so angry. She doesn`t care if he is a CEO of whatever company.
“I put my whole year for that! You don`t understand! Of course you don`t understand! The only thing you know is torturing and downgrade people! You are snakes! Blood sucker!!” She picks a glass of water on the coffee table and throws it to him. She exhaled heavily when she sees his expensive suit gets wet. His face so red and he bites his lips so hard. He is angry, literally.
“Get out of my office. I don`t want to see your face anymore!” He said as he points at the door and pick a cloth to wipe his face.
The next day Clint calls her.
“You did what??” Clint sound disbelieve.
“That guy is jerking; I have no choice than to put him to the right place”
“Nat he can be very picky sometimes because he is the best in the industry. He really knows how to spot a talent. He an expert”
“Doesn`t mean he can humiliate me”
“I know, but, he is a good guy. Trust me. Come on I`m working so hard to get your appointment. He is a very busy man”
“He doesn`t want to see my face again”
“But he asks about you, and wants you to come back”
Tomorrow morning
She in his office again. But he is not mention anything about what happen yesterday. He keeps focusing checking her work. She managed to finish another manuscript last night. She wondering why on earth his giving her another chance after she throwing a glass of water? She could not stop herself from staring at his face. But he ignore her.
“Miss Romanoff I don`t know who is going to read about a women who meeting an alien after she trying to kill herself?”
“Some..Some people may be” She said nervously
“I am wondering where you got all this idea.”
“I live beside a beach, and I get it from my imagination”
He put a paper on the table
“People doesn`t want imagination, they wants reality”
“Why do people reading a novel? Because they could not have what is writing in the story”
“I`m telling you what, if you can`t accept critics you can`t stay in this industry”
“Critics aren`t bad unless they are unconstructive”
He sighed.
“But you want me to give you a chance or not?” Her eyes widened.
“If you are a good person, yes please”
“If you want to work, follow my rules. And if you can`t accept my critics you can leave this room. Now”
She grips the seat holder tightly.
“Ok. I won`t”
“Miss Romanoff met me at café just beside this office tomorrow morning. We are going to have breakfast every morning together until I satisfy with your work”
Natasha cannot believe what she just heard. Inside, she just wanted to scream.
“All right deal. Thank you Mr. Rogers” She almost squealed at the same time shakes his hand.
As she almost leaves the door. He said something
“Miss Romanoff. Tororrow 7 am. I hate people getting late”
“Yes, see you tomorrow”
“And…Miss Romanoff”
“Yes”
“I believe this belong to you?” He`s holding a purple lace thong. Extra panties that she always carries with her, in case you know emergency. She turns back to his table with a red blush on her cheek. Oh shit. Is this a reason why he calling her back?
“Uhmm. I am sorry”
He looks like he trying to holding a laugh.
“I don`t know if this is a hint of something else or. But I do love purple lace”
She can`t hold anymore, she just want to go back home and push her face into her pillow so hard. Because she never feels so embarrassing like now. She quickly pulls the panty from his fingers and speed up her steps.
“Thank you for keeping this for me” She runs quickly and leave. God, why does she do something so embarassing to the man that she just throw a drink yesterday?
Tomorrow begin a mission of Natasha Romanoff wins Steve Rogers heart. The first day he orders a pancakes. It was the best pancakes she ever had in her life. But she doesn`t love pancakes before.
The first day he said her story almost like stuck in the elevator with the people he hates the most and he rather jump to death than stuck with these people.
“Look at the women in orange skirt. She has an average weight, a slender figure. She carries a briefcase, and a file with her. It`s possible that she an accountant or secretary? But when you look at her file she carries very closely. A Grolier company. What is that suppose to mean?”
“She sells children books”
“You probably right, but look what happen next” There is a man with a suit to her and pick up a file and the suit case from the lady in orange.
“What? The salesman is her husband?”
“Keep watching” The man in suits looks like waiting for someone after the women in orange leave. Than another woman in red gown coming with a smile on her face and kiss the man in suits. Natasha mouth open wide.
“See if you keep your eyes open you can write a story. Describe people. And tell the reader about real people who got flaws and we always given a wrong assumption. Why don`t you write a story that you know and familiar with”
The next day is another pancake with a lot of berries and strawberries. She feels like she like pancakes more than she thought she would be. Her work by the way he describe as ‘Like cat fallen from New York Tower, with a strangled sound’
The third day she notice more about Steve Rogers. He wakes up very early, arrive at his office before everyone else, single, very tidy and clean. Every day he will order the same thing a strawberry and berry pancakes. Other than that he very picky and always want the best, rigid and strict with rules. He is a perfectionist. She never sees any family photo on his table or a girlfriend photo. Except there is a photo of him with a brunette man. A photo looks like he was in college graduation. They both look young and free. Is he dating someone? Or maybe he not interested in women. But his comment about her lace thong proves otherwise. And the way his stare at her bare legs too.
Another pancakes and a cup of coffees. He read carefully her script. This time he not showing any gesture like cringes so hard, or rubs his jaw or his neck.
“Well Miss Romanoff. This is good. Good enough” She wanted to jump right away if no people inside the café.
“I really like this character. A soldier who living in the past and wakes up 70 years later in modern world. And I like her too; a spy who had dark past tries to regain people trust by helping them. Their relationships are very interesting. Platonic but there is deep love inside but they are afraid to admit to each other. Is this character a fiction or?”
“They are inspired by my parents. My father is a soldier and my mother is the complete opposite of him.”
“Ok”
She is waiting if he going to say something. If he is going to sign a deal with her. She wanted to ask but she very nervous especially when he finally shows his real smile. He look free and being himself. She loves his smiles and she melting. She gulped. She picks a large piece of pancakes with a white cream and put in her mouth and swallowed.
“Emm… Miss Romanoff there is a cream on your mouth” He said while mimicked to shows her.
“huh? Where here?”
“No over there”
Her mouth full of pancakes she pick a cloth to wipe her face
“No. Let me” He instead wipe the cream on her lower lips with his fingers. Than the whole world stop for a while. His touch sends an electric to her body. Her heart beating fast like it going to explode. His ridicules long lash looking at her. He did not pull his fingers from her lips. So she kisses his finger, and staring at his blue eyes. He wipes the cream and tries to pull his fingers but she holds it with her hand and sucks his thumb. His eyes went darker. And he knows that she wants him as much he wants her too.
Something happen later. No not really.
His shift will start at 8 am. He left for work leaving her with a big question. What the hell she was doing? He never call or texted her today. She keeps waiting and waiting.
“I swear if you check your phone again, I will pour this hot coffee down your throat. You did it for a hundred times!!” Say her room mates Jane.
She sighed later she realize the reality he never ever interested in someone like her. She gets it. He is a rich man, handsome and perfect in everywhere. She and he would never work.
Later at night she heard her noise near her window. She can`t believe what she just saw. Is was him! Climbing her rented house at a 3 am!
“Steve?? What the hell are you” She not even finish her words because he kissing her. Like his life depends on her. They made love right away on her bed.
Tomorrow morning she wakes up and he`s not there. She gets up and takes a shower. Went to kitchen, but she was surprise by a huge bouquet of red roses. Not one, but they filled everywhere of her small living room. And there is card written
“Will you be my girlfriend? A date and pancakes 7 am and
by the way Is a DEAL”
Oh shit. She is going to be late.
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