The First Commission (Open, tagging Verity)

[juststeverogers]

Steve has had some time to adjust to his new life in the Nexus. His suit he arrived in is hanging neatly on the front door to his hotel room, which sways when he pulls the door open to welcome his first official guest to his temporary home.

Aside from the art supplies taking up the large workdesk (covered in newspaper, he's careful not to mess up the nice furniture in this place) the room is rather well kept.

"Come on in, I've got it all ready to go."

Comments

[onemorebounty]

I doubt your own body will mutiny when you've just given it shiny new materiel.

*She smirks; Verity's remark gets a nod.*

I'll hold off on the SteriLites until they've come and gone, then.

*With a smirk, she turns back to Steve, gesturing to indicate Verity.*

You could probably think of her as your close-air support. Which I guess makes me, hmm... orbital artillery?

*Lasers from space that make your problems go away. It seems apt to her.*

[brave_heart_verity]

He'll work out how to alternate between meal and drink. It's one of those things people learn with time. Better he not try and argue with her about it, though; better he focus on the delicious healing things she's offering and leave her in a good enough mood to keep being the good cop.

"Right. I'm the one who'll swoop in for resupplies." She thinks that's what Samus is talking about? She doesn't understand military things. "Samus will sit above us all and watch and tut disapprovingly."

[juststeverogers]

But mooooooooom. Seriously so much sass going on. He'll eat his soup like a good sick person but man he is so not really hungry anymore. It's yummy. But his tummy isn't so happy.

"When she's not nuking from orbit." Steve wants to laugh, but that actually really hurts so he'll just laugh in spirit.

[onemorebounty]

*Steve's use of that phrase gets a sharply inquisitive look from Samus.*

That's an interesting phrase to hear from someone of your era. Be careful about bringing it home.

[brave_heart_verity]

Yeah, that's... odd, from him. "Don't. Don't bring that up at home. You think being a 4F is bad, trying being in prison."

Verity won't fuss if he can't finish his soup, so long as he tries. They can get more soup later. There's always more soup later.

[juststeverogers]

"Sorry? All I've done aside from hate my insides for the last week is watch tv." Steve shrugs. He doesn't even know what a nuke is, but Samus talking about suppression fire from orbit reminded him of hearing it.

"Is that like a swear?"

[onemorebounty]

"Nuke" is a truncation of "nuclear weapon," which the United States of your Facet will develop and deploy for the first time a few years in your future. It's a closely-held state secret, and Verity is right that the best you could hope for is to be jailed for espionage. They're quite destructive; the smallest are a high C or low D on the GalFed Threat Index.

*He doesn't know the Threat Index, she remembers, and so clarifies.*

One bomb could flatten an entire city, and kill hundreds of thousands of people in it, assuming sufficient population density.

[brave_heart_verity]

"And the radioactive cloud will poison hundreds of miles around the target," she finishes up quietly.

And then, a chilling thought, one she will not be sharing with Steve: without Cap, how many more will they have to drop to end the war? She busies herself with tidying up and hopes neither of them sees that look on her face.

[juststeverogers]

"They wouldn't..." They're not really doing that. Hundreds of thousands of people? "That's a level of civilian casualty that's unacceptable by anyone's standards." Right?

Right?

"That happened in your world, Verity?'

[onemorebounty]

When an army is garrisoned in a city, and the port is a major naval installation, civilian casualties are inevitable.

*Her gaze meets his, level and calm. It's a grim truth, but war doesn't spare innocents, and even good causes deal splash damage.*

The first atomic bomb dropped in war on Earth killed roughly eighty thousand people with its initial blast, and may have been responsible for as many as another eighty thousand in the first year after detonation.

*She'll dig out a tank of oxygen, if Steve's having trouble breathing now.*

[brave_heart_verity]

Verity can't look at him quite yet, but there's a little nod. "Yeah. Twice. It's how we defeated Japan. It was horrible."

She wasn't there. She wasn't even alive. And she still doesn't want to talk about it. Please stop asking, Steve.

[juststeverogers]

And that's just something people say for the hell of it, now. Steve's done eating, thanks. He's done participating in society as a whole for the moment.

They wouldn't. Who would agree to that?

And the worst thought of all, the one that makes Steve just sink into his chair. He's glad Bucky is on the European front. So very glad.

[onemorebounty]

*Seeing the state she's put Steve in, Samus decides to try to offer a ray of hope.*

It was the less-terrible option. A run of medals-purple hearts?-was struck in anticipation of the casualties projected for the ground invasion. By Verity's time, seventy years later, they still haven't finished using the medals from that run for all of the wounds taken by your country's soldiers in seventy years of peace and conflict.

[brave_heart_verity]

That was supposed to help, Samus?

Verity takes the soup when it's clear Steve's done with it and puts it back on the tray, then she crouches down so she can look up at him. "We haven't done it since."

[juststeverogers]

"...We became what we hate in order to stop a war. That's so heroic." Steve doesn't want to talk about it.

Can't believe it's a casual turn of phrase now.

He'd be even more upset to meet a Holocaust denier.

[onemorebounty]

Steve, two nuclear weapons isn't even in the same order of magnitude as what the people you were fighting against did. Your country did something terrible, yes, but it was the least-terrible of a bad set of options. That's war.

*Samus is really bad at being comforting. She glances to Verity--should she just stop talking now? She feels like she should probably stop talking now.*

[brave_heart_verity]

The answering look Samus gets makes it clear that the subject is going to change now.

"Hey. Why don't you show Samus some of your paintings? She's an art lover too. I bet she knows all the fancy words for saying how pretty something is." Ver's tone is gentle, coaxing, not demanding.

[juststeverogers]

Steve's quiet for a few minutes, only making noise to cough occasionally. It's not their fault, he reasons. He's got no reason to be upset at them.

"Y-yeah." He shifts up and points to Verity's painting. "Show her your peonies please?"

Samus is *so bad* at being comforting. So bad.

[onemorebounty]

*Samus looks over the painting in question, catching herself in a soft gasp at her first impression.*

Oh, this... this is beautiful, Steve. The color, the texture... it's so vivid.

She's good at making sure people don't need as much comforting though.

[brave_heart_verity]

Verity's more than a little proud of it. Steve should be too. She only drags herself away again to let housekeeping in when they knock.

"Vivid. That's the word for it. This is getting framed and I'm going to hang it up right where I'll see it first when I wake up."

[juststeverogers]

"Verity said she doesn't understand art." Steve looks between the two of them, peering over the blanket nest he'd sunk into before.

"So I painted something that can't be misunderstood."

[onemorebounty]

That's a good place for it. Start each day with a reminder of life, and beauty, and hope.

*Steve gets an approving smile, and her voice has softened from its usual stern edge.*

That is honestly beautiful, in sentiment and execution. I'm grateful to have seen it, and you deserve to be proud.

[brave_heart_verity]

"Steve's going to be a famous artist someday if he keeps this up." It's meant as a compliment, and it takes her a moment to realize how that might sound to him. "That's just. If you want to. It's a possibility, it's not future knowledge."

But she's still pretty sure he can and will be considered one of the great artists to grace the Nexus, if that's what he wants to do.

The housekeeper doesn't care much about these things. She just wants to do her job and get out.

[juststeverogers]

"Thank you." He's blushing and that's not just the fever. He's not used to getting compliments. And Verity is quickly becoming not just the exception. People here are so different.

"My sketchbook's over by the bed." He points to the brown covered notepad on the far table. "You can look through it if you want." It's got more in it than the last time Verity saw it. A sketch of an undead man with a huge smile and unattached hands. A sketch of Verity drinking a cup of coffee, staring out the window of the diner.

And more sketches of his home. Of his mother. Of Bucky. But there's new people too, and that's important to Steve. He has more people to draw, now.

[onemorebounty]

*Samus takes that as an invitation to look through it, and does so, taking great care not to crumple or smudge the pages.*

Good technique. A realistic, almost formalist style, but there's a spark of life to them, too. Capturing not just what something looks like, but what it feels like. Verity's right, Steve, you are a worlds-class artist.