as under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

[theoldlie]

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."

Comments

[jokerized]

"Why would only some people remember dying," he asks, the question more than anything else making him unsteady as he stands back up. He beats the dust off his scrub bottoms and is glad he's at least dry, sitting in it, but that's the least of his worries.

Could it have killed him, what the Joker did? There had been injections with the shocks, but that had been--pain, disorientation. He wasn't supposed to die, he was supposed to kill Batman.

God, he hopes it isn't some kind of afterlife. Death might be preferable to Bruce's disappointment or pity, but the idea of the Joker being able to show up--that's too much. Wary as he is of the people here, so far no one's out and out made themselves a threat, and that has to count for something. "It's this way," he says, once he comes back, the pair of them idled on their feet with only him knowing the way. "Sorry, it's just--I wasn't dead. Or I don't think I was."

[theoldlie]

"Maybe you don't even remember it happening. Maybe it's one minute, you're just breathing fine and the next..." Still, none of that makes sense to Steve, so he's probably just babbling on about things that don't make sense, at this point. He knows that he needs to figure this out, but maps seem like the best idea because he's probably not going to successfully take on philosophy and the concept of an afterlife so easily.

"That's what doesn't make sense," is Steve's frustrated return, wishing that he didn't sound so tense. "How can I be dead, but you're not? How can we both be in the same place?"

[jokerized]

That Tim admits anything of his perspective is only in the effort to maintain it, shaken up by the prospect: one minute you're breathing and the next you're not. One minute you're laughing and the next you're choking, a spike in your chest.

Maybe he isn't dead, but he did kill someone. He did that.

Shaking himself, he makes it a tic, nerves, getting the hair out of his eyes. "Where I'm from it's not impossible," he admits. "Magic, gods, holes in the universe. This place makes a kind of sense, I just don't know the point of it yet."

[theoldlie]

"I mean, I've seen things like that," he says, even if those words are dragged from a place of sheer disbelief, like he's still not entirely sure that he did see them, but he has to at least give credence to the fact that maybe there are Greek gods and Amazons and a God of War fueling them along. "I guess I'm not really used to the idea of them being possible, yet."

"So, second chance, huh?" Steve breathes out, staring around him at what looks like his folks' place from when he was little. "To do what?" he asks bluntly, a moment later, because he's not entirely sure what there is to do here.

[jokerized]

Sucking in a breath, Tim follows his gaze around the immediate area, seeing the--lack of anything, really--that greets most people. He blusters it back out with a shrug.

"Best I can tell? Hunt and gather, learn to farm, or run around trying to find the way out that fifty or so people before you couldn't manage." Watching the guy drip on the dirty around him, he inclines his head down the path. "Come on, the inn's this way, you probably want to get into your dry gear before you sign up for any of that."

[theoldlie]

Steve follows like a good soldier, letting the words filter through his mind. It's definitely nothing that he expected, truthfully, but at the same time, he's not sure that he expected anything but an end. He'd done his job, that's all that's supposed to happen, right? You do your task, you don't get to see what happens next.

"Farming," he echoes, thinking that it's a more sedate, peaceful life than he'd ever be expecting. Maybe the boy's got the right idea, though, seeing as dry clothes are going to be much more helpful than anything else right now. "Didn't exactly see a tailor's around, are they hiding one of those at the inn?"

[jokerized]

"I don't really know," Tim admits. He feels like he's admitting that a lot, but lying would fall apart pretty quickly. "Some people sew, some people have other clothes--but they just say it appears sometimes. You get a box with your name on it, otherwise you make do."

He's been making do with frequent afternoons dedicated to laundry. It isn't really that he can't live in his own sweat, he's used to doing that in tights. But the starched way his clothes start to hang, lived in for that long, reminds him too much of being left on the slab. "There's more in your bag, though. Should still be dry, you can wear it while you get settled."

[theoldlie]

Steve nods as he takes that into account, figuring that if he can find someone with a talent for sewing, maybe he could persuade them into helping to get him something a little thicker. What he's got is fine for now (and the gray of it actually makes it easier to fade into the background, truthfully), but if the weather takes a turn, Steve wants to be prepared.

Maybe it's just so that his mind has a task to focus on, but he's trying here, he really is. He glances to the bag and then back to Tim, trying to figure out what his story is. "Where do you come from, before here?" he asks, curious if he's another victim of the war.

[jokerized]

"City called Gotham," he answers, for the fact that he can answer it at all. "I'm Rob," he adds-- a half-truth, maybe a fourth of a truth, but the fewer people connecting Gotham and Tim Drake in a strange place, the better. The last thing he wants to be is some rich-kid hostage in another dimension.

Though, if it would get him back to his own world, maybe it wouldn't be the worst card to play. At least Bruce would know where he is, and that he could use a hand getting out. "I'd say wrong place and wrong time, but there's no rhyme or reason with people who show up here, far as anyone can tell."