droptheshield

r o o m s

When he first wakes up, he thinks for a moment that it's that same narrow bed and that same strange, sightless room from that nightmare of the first few moments he was here. It isn't. And it isn't that he feels like he's been transported again, but rather that things have settled, that that other room was the dream, and this is more of a reality.

So much for a reality.

Steve investigates the room at length, and then, when there's nothing else to do, he leaves it. The hallways are long and the hotel seems to go on forever, but it shouldn't be hard to find his way back.

At least, that's what he tells himself.

b u i l d i n g

It's been a while since Steve's stayed at a hotel, but this has gotta be one of the ritzier ones he's ever been to. Sure, there's something surreal about being snowed into the place, but at least there's plenty to do, and he's hardly complaining about that.

It gives him a chance to get used to the place, at least. And maybe he'll meet some people, too. There seem to be plenty of them here.

So once he's left his room, he makes a point of trying to learn the layout of the hotel. The strange oddities, the curious corners. The photographs of bygone years with strangely familiar faces.

So many strangely familiar faces...

d a y t i m e

It's almost like Coney Island, but back in the day. Not the new version of it, which he went to once before he moved from New York to D.C. like that would solve anything about his feelings about the new, modern world. The boardwalk, the smell of greasy food and the noise of people on the beach, all of that is very much what he remembers. He can almost hear carnival rides, even though there are none. It's the memory, more than anything.

Steve is more than happy to just see what everything about.

He does end up finding a curious little trove of washed up items, though, and that piques his interest almost as much as the excitement everyone seems to be feeling. It's quiet over on that corner of the beach, so he can spend his time looking though the things that have washed up slowly.

e v e n i n g

"Oh. Whoa, okay."

Steve can't remember the last time he felt drunk. It's not a bad feeling, he thinks? More strange. He's holding a bottle of beer because he enjoys the act of social drinking, and the evening's festivities just make that better. But by halfway through, he has a heady little buzz and a grinning sort of enjoyment of the whole thing.

Is it only half way through the first one? Maybe he's on his third.

Either way, Steve Rogers hasn't been tipsy in seventy years. He was a bit of a lightweight before, and it seems he's still a bit of a lightweight.

g h o s t

Half of the people in the viewing gallery are dead, but so is he. He is. He has to be.

Steve knows this because many of them died before him. While he was alive and before the war; men, so many men, during the war; while he was on ice and after the war; after the war; so much after the war.

Many of them died because of him, in some way or another. Because of negligence and hubris. Because of it was war. Because it's been war since 1942 and he thought they stopped, but they never really did, did they? He just slept through some of it and then, then they brought him back and pointed him in the direction they needed him to go and he went.

He doesn't want to go anywhere near that coffin. He hates these flowers. What are they all even doing here? There's no sense in mourning someone like him--something.

The first vase doesn't come up off the floor.

But the second one does.

Not a single head turns when Steve throws it, or when he screams in frustration and anguish. Why won't they just leave?

v i s i t o r

Steve has never dealt well with death.

His father died when he was young, before he ever really knew him. His mother died slowly, over the course of his life, a combination of poor conditions and exhaustion and poverty, of her own health, and finally of the agony of tuberculosis that lived not only in her lungs but in other organs as well. They never tell you that, that it can get into your other organs. That so many things can.

And then there's Bucky, and then there's all the Howling Commandos, and then there's Peggy. It's one after another, really. So Steve's never dealt well with death.

Still, here he is.