Checking in (set after Halloween event)

[juststeverogers]

In the aftermath of the Nightmare incident in the Nexus, Steve knew the most important thing in the immediate was making sure people were okay. Hell, he'd spent most of his time tending to Amelia's wounds such that by the time he was finished most of the cafe had cleared out. He's glad the rogue got the care she needed but he hasn't seen her since.

In fact, he's not seen most of them since. He waited a bit to see if he'd spot familiar faces in the Nexus, but with things quiet he takes matters into his own hands and sends out a message to several of his friends.

Hey, it's Steve.

I know you were involved in the mess during the Halloween party and I really want to make sure you're alright. I'm sorry I haven't reached out sooner. I wanted to make sure you got the time and care you needed after everything that happened. The coordinates to my apartment are listed at the end of this message.

Please let me know you're okay.

Comments

[juststeverogers]

"Fine, I'm...I'm fine." Steve waves off Ghost's concerns as he bends to scoop up his shield but freezes midway and jerks his head up to glare at the remaining vandal well after it's decided to leave with the rest of its remaining brethren.

A silence settles over the area that in any world Steve knows the meaning of. The fight is over, at least for now. The soldier slings his shield over his shoulder before striding over to Blaze and pulling her up to her feet.

...Foot.

"Easy now. You gonna be alright there? I'm not a medic, Blaze. I can carry you out if I've got to but it's going to be slow going. Let's find whatever it was you two were looking for and get out."

[rekindledtitan]

"We can transmat back to the ship, and I can repair Blaze..."

"Yeah, it'll be... nngh. Fine." Blaze winces, even with Steve's support. This is the part where she remembers that she's by no means immune to pain, especially when she no longer has an immediate objective to distract her. She clips her sidearm back into place and gestures at the dead servitor. "Over there."

When Steve helps her over she sinks to her knees and pulls a couple of tools from a side pouch. The metal carcass in front of her is turned over and she gets to cracking it open. Ether spills everywhere despite her care to avoid cutting any more lines, the fluid pale and glowing softly. And then there's the fluid leaking from her shattered boot, until Ghost manages to swoop in and stem the flow. "Just got to dig out the good bits, heh. Parts of the processing core and ether synthesis unit. That kinda stuff. That was a hell of a job, killing this thing."

[juststeverogers]

Blaze and Ghost have a second healer on hand on the ship anyway, though really Angel could have shown up at any time if Blaze had summoned her. She's probably busy cleaning Blaze's weapons for the Guardian while she's out on patrol.

Steve moves once Blaze settles to her knees and does whatever he can to help rip the servitor's casing apart. He can't get over the sharp scent of the ether but grits his teeth and continues to work at prying open the servitor for Blaze and Ghost to play around in to their hearts' content.

"Well, it's not why I showed up here originally, but how could I just walk away from something like this?"

[rekindledtitan]

"You wouldn't be the man I know." Her helm's faceplate betrays nothing, but her voice is warm. She hands Steve a couple tools to help jimmy the shell apart while she and Ghost gut it briskly. "The Fallen worship these things, you know. This one's on the small side for a full-blown machine god, but it looks like they were trying to elevate it. Good thing we put a stop to it."

She pulls out an ether-soaked component and sets it aside for Ghost to transmat to the ship. "Why did you drop by, anyway? Something we can help with?"

[juststeverogers]

"I came to check up on the two of you, as a matter of fact. I was so busy tending to a friend's wounds after the mess at the Halloween party I didn't get a chance to check up on the rest of my friends. Adia told me you two were caught up in separate things and I..."

Steve trails off momentarily while he muscles open the shell further for Blaze to be able to reach its innermost components. When he looks up again he's looking at the little bot before he looks back to Blaze.

"I wasn't able to help then. Either of you. So I wanted to be here now, in whatever way you might have needed me."

[rekindledtitan]

Blaze's head jerks up, looking between Steve and Ghost before she says, "We've been doing all right. Think Ghost's still kinda shaken up but he and Adia did well looking out for each other."

"The Nightmare took me back to... to a terrible place. And I don't mean that ship. It was awful," Ghost admits, looking down briefly. "Being alone like that is... something I don't want to experience again. But I have my Guardian back, now. I left my fear in the Nightmare. Well, most of it, anyway." He looks at Blaze, gaze fixing pointedly on the bundle of tattered cloth at her hip. She's not looking, buried near up to her shoulders in the servitor's carcass, eyes on the component she's wrangling out.

"Yeah. Just wish I could've... protected you."

"...Likewise," Ghost says, more softly.

[juststeverogers]

"You know why despite getting a ticket home and an upgrade into a new body I live in the Nexus?"

Steve's not sure where he's going with this, hadn't meant to speak up about it at all but Blaze and Ghost's back and forth has something tighten in his chest. He hadn't been able to save Bucky on the train. Hadn't been able to keep his friends from becoming criminals when he did manage to save the former Winter Soldier. Had made everyone he cared about go off the grid and into hiding. Torn the Avengers apart.

He'll be damned if he lets some supernatural phenomena take away his friends here, too. Steve's done enough failing. It's time to start stepping up and doing whatever it takes for his friends and for the world at large. Every world.

"I can't go back home anymore. I lost a lot of people. Got several more hurt who shouldn't have been involved with my fights. When I heard the two of you were stuck in that....that place. And I wasn't able to bring you back or even go after you..." He ducks his head then.

"You're both important to me. So. Yes. I came all the way out here to make sure you're doing alright. To fight your fights with you. I don't want to lose anyone else."

[rekindledtitan]

He has both robots looking his way well before he finishes speaking. Probably neither of them really understood how concerned their friend was. They've been dealing with this between themselves ever since the Nightmare, and even if Ghost at least remembered that they needn't do so alone, it truly didn't occur to them how their friends might feel about it.

"Steve..." Ghost flies over to him. Even Blaze pulls away from the servitor, though her gaze drops uncomfortably as he speaks. "I'm sorry. We didn't mean to worry you. But we're safe now."

"Some things you just have to endure yourself," Blaze says. She stoops awkwardly, grabbing the tail of a Fallen cloak and wiping her ether-slicked hands before she limps closer and pats Steve's shoulder. Whatever else, at least she's not hiding herself in machine guts any more. "Hey, it's all right. We made it, didn't we? I'm sorry we didn't think of calling you, too. But if you want to be sure we're back on our feet- uh, metaphorically speaking, anyway-" She pats the servitor shell, sounding hopeful. "How's that for reassuring?"

[juststeverogers]

He's too big in this body to really give Ghost a hug without being seriously concerned that he's going to damage the little bot but Steve wishes he could. Instead he holds up his left hand, index finger raised slightly to tap one of the bot's points gently and let him scan Steve. The sentiment is there if nothing else. A smile tugs at the corners of his mouth when they assure him they're alright. It's a weight off his chest to hear it from their mouths.

Voice modulators. Same thing, and never tell Tony Stark it's his voice that's started reminding him of the words he ought to know for new fangled tech. Ever.

"Yeah. I'm just...I'm so glad." The smile widens into a grin then, glancing down at the servitor shell and the spilled ether pooling on the ground. "This was good. A good way to stay sharp. In shape. I hope you call me again sometime and don't hog all the fun to yourselves."

[rekindledtitan]

"Would we do that?" Her tone can't match her joking words. He looks so very relieved. So grateful. How can she shatter that? It makes Blaze hold her silence even with the truth coiled painfully tight inside her. She shifts her weight to her good foot and that's when she notices the way Ghost is staring at her. He almost looks... stern. She blinks at him.

"Blaze, I think you should tell him the rest. What happened in there. All of it."

"Ghost?" She frowns at him, taken off-guard and hesitating for once in her life. Her companion perseveres, flying back to face her and lowering his voice, not that it'll stop Steve hearing at this range.

"You said yourself that hiding doesn't help. And... Blaze, if anyone can understand, it's Steve."

She looks at Ghost with narrowed eyes, her gaze flicking to Steve awkwardly, the holding herself stock still for a minute. Honestly, though, keeping silent this long has been straining the limits of her capacity for deception. "Kinda what I was worried about, Ghost... ah, Light damnit, I don't know what to say about it!" She shakes her head, looking everywhere but up at her friends. Her body language speaks for her, though - and it speaks of frustration. And less familiar in her, shame.

[juststeverogers]

Steve had been feeling relieved to know that is friends were alright, but it tanks when the bots have their own little argument about how much they were lying to Steve. It sticks at him in a way he wishes didn't feel so familiar these days. Hiding things form Steve Rogers is pretty much a requirement for joining the late Avengers, or so it felt like.

Still, it sounds like it was less 'Ultron' and more 'I still have nightmares about Loki taking over my free will' which in the grand scheme of things is at least something Steve can both understand and deal with. NO one wants another Ultron.

"...What happened in there?" He doesn't raise his voice. Steve's waited this long to hear from them. A few more seconds won't kill him. "And why am I the only guy who'd understand?"

[rekindledtitan]

Blaze shoots another look at Ghost, but this is out in the open now and reproaching him won't get her anywhere. He doesn't even offer her guidance beyond the tiniest bob. Like a nod. Go on.

"I was trapped in a labyrinth with Reynard." She meets Steve's eyes deliberately, rattling off the facts bluntly. Charge at them and maybe they won't get a chance to hurt. "Looked like an ancient library, but the further down we went the bigger it got, and there was this pit at the center- anyway. Corpses strung up in every other shadow, some of them animate. They, uh- they were people I knew, some of them. Maybe Reynard recognized the others, he never said. We'd have had it in hand, but-"

And maybe it's telling that all of that comes easily enough. None of that truly bothers her. But it's a few seconds before she can spit out the rest.

"I rebooted. No catalyst and no warning, Just shut down and wiped in the middle of the floor. Couldn't even remember my name properly afterward and you always know that." Her voice picks up an anxious note at that last and she shakes herself, hands closed into fists. Blaze-37. I know. I'm all right. Keep talking. "It happened again after that. Kept happening. Twenty-minute intervals, down to the second. After a while I'd realize what was happening. Know it was coming. Couldn't make any sense of why. I figured it was just... going to keep happening."

[juststeverogers]

Ghosts, hollowed out corpses of people he used to know. Being alone in a way that so few people ever truly are. Steve knows that feeling all too well. Remembers the worst times when he first woke back up after dumping his plane into the Arctic. When the only things familiar to him were ghosts of the people he used to know seen in the faces of the living.

Steve's face starts to soften, a hand reaching up to grasp at Blaze's shoulder because he does understand and Ghost is right. He's lived through this and knows that kind of lonliness. Except Blaze isn't finished, and what she says next robs the breath from Steve's lungs.

She rebooted. Wiped. Again and again. Left grasping at figments of things she should know with no real understanding of what she'd lost. Only knowing it would happen again. nothing she could do to stop it.

There's white noise crowding into Steve's head. The bellowing scream of a train and fingers slipping just out of reach. The sound of armor piercing rounds punchign through his apartment and striking Nick Fury. The stuttering hum of the helicarrier engines failing and the weight of wrecked steel in his hands. Footsteps hurrying up the stairs in a rickety row house in Germany.

That wasn't your fault, Buck.

No, but I still did it.

How much of it do you remember? You didn't remember me or Brookyln, so--

I remembered every one.

Steve's hand is shaking when it finally grabs onto Blaze's shoulder. Gives blaze a sharp nod and turns wet eyes away from her. There's only one man who knows what Blaze went through better than Steve Rogers, and he's currently recovering quietly somewhere hidden in Wakanda.

"You made it through." And it sounds like Steve has had to say this before. Has had to say it for himself as much as the person he's trying to support. "You're here. Blaze-37. Ghost is still here. I'm here. You've got that back. Those memories."

[rekindledtitan]

"For now." She probably shouldn't have said that. It hurts so much more than she expected, to see that look on his face. There's an internal wrench, an ache she's only ever felt seeing how frightened Ghost was after their reunion. She reaches up to grip his arm gently, and if she limits herself to that it's because she can't decide whether she wants to pull him into a hug or beat the hell out of everything.

"I've been trying to stay focused. Not think about it. But I can't shake the idea it's coming again. I never remembered the reboots before. Now I can't stop."

[juststeverogers]

"You should make a back up. Store it with Ghost, or give it to someone you trust. Update it whenever you want and have it there in case of an emergency."

He remembers Zola and the room full of (what were then considered to be) super computers underneath the original SHIELD base in New Jersey. With the tech in Blaze's world or even Steve's own now, shouldn't it be possible? Especially for a person who's already mostly artificial?

"That way no matter what happens to you, you can get it back. From someone you trust. Because we won't give up on you. Not Ghost, not me, not any of your friends here."

[rekindledtitan]

She blinks at Steve, taking in his words and the determination behind them. Then looks to an equally surprised-looking Ghost. "Is that even possible? I mean, we can't- not for people. Frames, yeah, but they're a lot simpler..."

Ghost spins rapidly. He doesn't want to quash her hope, but nor does he want to raise them unfairly. He's very cautious when he points out, "Even accessing their memories can get complicated. Exos are Golden Age technology - nobody in our universe understands your physiology that well. It's... not like you have any connection ports."

[juststeverogers]

"I might know someone who could figure it out. He made his own....I..I don't know what to call JARVIS. AI? He was a good friend, and he builds suits that are similar to your exoskeleton, Blaze. If anyone could figure out Golden Age tech, it'd be Tony Stark."

Steve gives a shrug though. Even if Blaze takes him up on it it's not going to be easy. And if she doesn't want to, well...

"I guess you could make your own logs manually. A journal, with photographs and descriptions in your own voice and words about the people important to you. Memories. Events. Stuff like that."

[rekindledtitan]

"Stark?" Her rising hopes are checked suddenly. Blaze narrows her optics skeptically at Steve, her voice troubled. "Weren't you two fighting on opposite sides last time you met? I thought you weren't exactly friends these days."

"Do you really think we could ask him for help?" Ghost, too, is caught between hope and worry. He's seen the name Stark crop up in more places than his Guardian; he believes it when Steve says this is the kind of man who might be able to help. But neither does he want their friend to take a chance trying to make contact for them...

[juststeverogers]

"We were, but he's still my friend. Tony hasn't forgiven me though, so we'd have to go through an intermediary. Luckily, one of my other friends is here too. And Stark likes her a hell of a lot better than me right now. Natasha Romanov is one of mine and we can trust her, even if she talks like we shouldn't."

Steve knows it's no good if he does to Tony for help. There's no way that would end well. Natasha could think of something though. And Tony's still on speaking terms with her. He's pretty confident just meeting Blaze and Ghost would be enough to interest him into agreeing.

"It's up to you two. Just a suggestion, and I don't even know if he'll be able to do anything yet."

[rekindledtitan]

"I know it's a long shot." Though in Steve's time, working with access to alien tech, maybe they're closer to the people of the Golden Age than anyone on her Earth. Even if she knows nothing is guaranteed, there's a hopeful light in her eyes. "But we know Natasha. I'd trust her to handle it. And if there's a chance it'll work- I have to try, Steve. I need something better than sitting and waiting for what's coming. The last time I rebooted I was lucky. Fate- the Light - gave me a fresh start. Next time won't be so kind."

I needed a few days before I could write Steve without wibbling

[juststeverogers]

"You do? Good. You two name me a time and I'll message her and we can all meet up at my place, go over a plan and then I'll send you off with her. Ghost can keep in touch with me the whole time via my phone so I'll be there in every way but physical to answer any questions you might have."

Steve claps Blaze on the shoulder and does his best to look confident. Even if they can't figure it out, they need to try something. Hell, even trying might give these two an idea for something that might work even if this doesn't. He nods to Ghost as well and makes himself smile ever so slightly.

These two are his friends and Steve wants to help however he can.

the MCU never tires of putting Steve through the wringer

[rekindledtitan]

"Soon." Blaze sounds as if it's only grudgingly that she doesn't specify 'right the hell now'. But aside from the practicalities of making all the arrangements... "We have to go back to the Tower first. Commander Zavala and I need to have words. But once that's taken care of, there's no sense in delaying." Or in stopping to dwell on what they could be getting into. Steve wouldn't set them on a path that wasn't worth following.

"I can keep the comm feed secure while we're there," Ghost says thoughtfully. "Not that they could reach you anyway. That should be safe enough."

Re: the MCU never tires of putting Steve through the wringer

[juststeverogers]

"I'll get in touch with Natasha then while you're meeting with your commander and fill her in on the situation. I don't think she's on a mission right now but it never hurts to check. Plus, she'll have to get Stark to make time in his schedule and that's probably our deciding factor of when we can do this. He likes to keep busy."

Not that Steve can blame him. He and Stark may not be on speaking terms right now but it hasn't stopped him from keeping at least a general tab on his former friend. Stark being a CEO and highly public figure definitely makes that a lot easier than it would otherwise be. Steve isn't much of a spy, but he's picked up a few things over the years from Peggy and Natasha. He nods to Ghost again.

"I'm not too worried, though it's important neither of you mention I'm the one who sent you there. You'll be there as Natasha's associates, not mine."

[rekindledtitan]

"Are we?" There's not a lot of nuance to Blaze's expressions, but her frown at those words is especially sharp, her posture tensing under all that armor. There's an unusual undertone of suspicion in her voice. Ghost is listening close as always. "That for our benefit, or his?"

[juststeverogers]

"Both? I don't think he'd turn down a chance to study something new or find a solution to a problem he's got a pretty good head for solving, but we didn't part on good terms and it's better to be safe than sorry. When it comes to something as important as this I don't want to take any chances on our disagreements having a bearing in your reasons for meeting him."

Steve offers a shrug of his shoulders. Even knowing what he does now, he would do almost all of it again and he's not too proud of that. Tony Stark is a good man and one Steve respects as much as they get under each other's skin sometimes. He's far from innocent in all of this, but he can't change it now.

"He's a good man. Arrogant though."