sixthiterationlogs | as under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

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as under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

WHO: Steve Trevor
WHERE: Fountain / Center of Town
WHEN: July 25
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: n/a

drowning

He can't breathe. He can't breathe. At first, he thinks that obviously he can't breathe, the fire and the smoke from the explosion are causing him to experience his last breaths in a way that mimics drowning, the chemicals from Dr. Poison's vials clouding his lungs and making it feel like he can't get a breath. Only, then he opens his eyes to water surrounding him and realizes that no, this isn't the plane, he's actually drowning.

Again.

This time, he's far more conscious than the last and something like a current in the water is pushing him upwards, though it's like there's a block in his mind that's preventing him from getting past the flinch of expecting fire and poison. With one last strong kick, he surfaces and hauls in oxygen in panicked, heavy hauls, the breath he never expected to take again. He reaches for his revolver, out of habit, but there's nothing at hand on him beyond the straps of a bag and a pair of clothes better suited to the hospital than war. Grasping the stones, he feels a little too unsteady to haul himself over the edge just yet, but he digs his fingernails into stonework and pries himself up until he can roll to the ground, collapsing in a wet heap.

He's breathing. He's ... alive? Steve can't see how that's possible, not unless he failed his mission, and if he'd done that, then there are bigger things to worry about. He needs to get up and find out what happened. He needs to find Chief or Charlie or Sami or --

Steve closes his eyes and thinks about Diana, wishing they'd had more time. Maybe he's managed to get lucky and get himself out a tight mess (though he hasn't got the first idea how), but that doesn't mean that he gets to stop working. Hauling himself to a sitting position, he clambers to his feet when he sees someone passing in the distance through blurred vision and wet lashes. "Hey," he calls, coughing up residual water. "Wait, wait, just hold a second, please," he adds, straining to get his legs to work, but he's still so shaky, the explosion is still so fresh in his mind.

bearings

It's sort of like going back in time to his childhood, Steve thinks as he maps his way around the village, using the measure of his step in order to gauge distances and horizons as best as he can. The houses look strangely unfamiliar, built with materials that Steve doesn't really recognize, but there's common buildings that he can pick out and name with ease. He ventures towards the mill and the inn, takes his time with a few of the other public structures, but eventually, makes his way back to the fountain to take inventory of what's in his bag.

He doesn't find any weapons, which is the first thing he's looking for. After so many years working with the BEF under their intelligence arm, Steve's not entirely sure how comfortable he feels being unarmed, which is something he'll have to fix soon enough. Until then, his own two fists will need to do the trick.

There's a whole wall of things he's not thinking about right now, like the part where he's probably dead and he probably burned up in a haze of poison and smoke, but somehow he's managed to come out of it with a body and a pair of gray hospital scrubs? That's what Steve doesn't understand, not to mention if this is supposed to be heaven or hell, he'd expect something out of it.

Adjusting on his knees as he starts to repack his bag, he glances at his surroundings again and tries to decide which way to go. Without a compass, he'll have to go the old-fashioned way, but with the sun high in the sky, he figures he's got time enough to choose. "North," he says aloud, squinting and trying to get his bearings. "Time to head North."

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Tim pauses, caught with his hands knotting a fold of his shirt. He'd been slinking away to find help, having heard then seen the man splash and roll out of the fountain. Clearly disoriented, clearly worse for wear--the kind of thing any kid trapped without a communications device would find an adult for.

He's not any kid, but--first rule of a place like this: don't give out your real name. Second or third rule is don't show them what you're capable of. So he's been Rob, the shook up kid with a bad nervous laugh, keeps to himself, helps with the simple things.

Being called out by a choking man with questions he can't answer isn't one of the simple things, but he's truly lost himself if he can just walk away. "Right," he relents, posture relaxing enough to turn him around, get him approaching, slow enough to assess. "Sorry, I was going to get you some help, hey--"

He never does learn his lesson, moving in to steady the guy under one arm as he starts to tilt and cough. The weight isn't overwhelming--he's propped up Bruce in full-body kevlar--but the press of another body is immediately awful, immediately closes his throat. He closes up for a minute. Silent, swallowing, hoping this isn't another ruse.

"Easy," he tells them both, when his voice comes back to him. "It's fine, you're--fine."

Coughing, Steve feels like there's at least a little more water he needs to dispel, feeling like it's lodged in there. It's probably just in his head, some psychosomatic episode that's lingering because of the poison, but as he scrabbles his fingers over himself, there's no sign of it, which means there's no risk to the boy helping him.

When Steve finally gets a hold of himself, he straightens up to stand on his own accord, trying to get past the instant flashback in his mind to the sound of the explosion, that split-second thought of Diana, before there'd been nothing and then rushing water, drowning him again. "I'm not," he says clearly. "Where am I?" he demands. How am I here is another thing he wants to know, but that's a little harder to answer.

They're both difficult--currently impossible--to answer. This is the first time Tim has dealt with the reverse of his own sudden arrival, wrenched from Barbara's arms into the depths of the fountain. It had been enough of a shock, enough of something new, to get him speaking again, trying to get his wits about him.

Maybe he should thank someone, for that.

"There are some theories about where and how, but honestly? Nobody here really knows." Or they aren't telling, a problem for later in his stay. "There's an inn they take new people to, or we could find you a house to bunk down in, weather can get nasty out of nowhere from what I hear."

He still feels like he can't catch his breath, but Steve's genuinely not sure if that's the physical force of the water leaving his lungs or the fact that he's still breathing after that panicked last moment of resignation, knowing that his death would at least save lives. If he's still alive, does that mean that it didn't work? Does this mean that it was all for nothing?

"I don't want to go anywhere until I know more," Steve says, trying to be firm and clear, but sounding a little scattered. "I don't, this isn't, I can't be..." He needs to pick a line of thought and stick with it. "Before I got here, I was in an ... impermanent way," he says, thinking that maybe it's best to say it like that. "I don't understand how I can have a flesh and blood body."

"What, like a ghost," he asks, the teenager breaking like a disbelieving sun between the clouds of his conditioning. When they close again, it's not so hard to fathom. If this is some dimensional nexus, pulling--or rather horrifying to consider, copying--people from time and space, why not the dead? It wouldn't be the weirdest thing he's seen.

At least the guy is more flesh than bone.

It doesn't make touching him any more pleasant, but that's not on him. "Sit down then," he says, tentative hands fitting around the guy's arm to keep him steady. "Before you fall down from the shock. Just sit down and take a few more breaths, figure out a question, and I'll do my best."

Steve isn't sure how to explain any of this without getting somewhat graphic, but he also knows that if he doesn't, he'll never get the point across. "There was an explosion," he settles for saying, still feeling a little wild and reeling from it. His heart is beating too fast, his skin feels too hot, and every few seconds, he gasps, like he hasn't figured out that he's not choking on Dr. Poison's lethal pet project.

He manages to sit, even though it's not as graceful as it ought to be, reaching a hand behind him for balance when he sways and wobbles. "Okay," he says, straining to look for a question in his mind that isn't where's Diana? Is she safe? "How did I get to the bottom of a fountain?" he starts, because he'd been at least ten thousand feet in the air when he'd fired, but he'd turned up under the earth's soil, like a soldier buried badly.

He's glad to have made studying the board such a priority, that he can at least back up his I don't know's with and neither does anyone else, where applicable. "We don't know yet. People come up out of it, but no one's ever seen them appear, down there. There's notes from people who tried, or who swam to the bottom."

Hopefully the shock of not being dead will dissuade this guy from making his own inspection.

"Some people do come in saying--saying they've died," he recalls, dropping into a crouch within the guy's immediate line of sight, picking at grass between his fingers. Less threatening, but, really--better starting point for the guy's new center of gravity if he tries to get up and start anything. "But nobody ever comes out injured, so. Maybe you were just almost dead? Whoever brings us here heals us up first," lifting one hand to swipe a thumb over the scars on his cheek.

Maybe it's the length and the severity of the war that's finally worked its insidious way into his consciousness, but he hadn't even noticed the scars. He's seen men with their faces torn away, legs blown off, shrapnel sticking out of places it shouldn't exist, and it's just left him blind to so many faults.

"We don't know, how do we not know, hasn't this place been surveyed, where is it on a map?" He can feel his frustration building, maybe because it's the second time in a while that this has happened to him. Islands, villages, places don't show up out of nowhere. Or, they shouldn't, but apparently this is the kind of life Steve gets to live now. He breathes out slowly and rubs a hand over his face. "No, trust me," he says, the laugh a dark, hollow one. "I was dead."

"You don't blow up a plane full of hydrogen bombs and come out of that alive," he says, though it's with an edge of panic. "I'm not that lucky."

Hydrogen bombs, hair cropped close on the sides, demands for information--it's one side of a coin, and the other is the panic, and it's spinning on a tabletop with no telling which way it's going to fall. Managing either feels like a dance he knows, he knows, but the music is muffled over such distance that he can't find the rhythm.

He used to do this. Used to deal with things, make people feel better--but something atrophied in the three weeks before and the unknown lapse of time after.

It's not like he can tell the guy he's got this, he'll handle it. No one is handling it. "Apparently there's some kind of luck involved, 'cause we're sitting right here," Tim says. "There are some maps and theories at the inn; it's a canyon, one side of it only just opened up into new territory. No one's been outside of it to find out where we are."

arrival

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bearings

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Bearings~ Mill

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