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bakerstreet2016-03-24 09:32 pm
moosejuice) wrote in bakerstreet2016-03-24 09:32 pm
The Superhero's Significant Other Meme
 You're just an average Joe (or Joanna, as the case may be). You live a normal, unassuming life and go on with your day-to-day business. There is, however, one thing about you that is a little unusual - beside your sparkling personality. You're dating a superhero. So, what's in this week's issue? Are you childhood friends come together? Do you actually know your love is that caped crusader? If you do, is it a thorn in your side that you will always come second to the cause? Of course, there's always going to be that annoying time where they try to "protect" you by breaking up with you. Oh joy. Well, at least, how's your sex life? Surely those super powers can make for some interesting bedroom trysts. Maybe after one of them, you can tell your beau that you're a superhero, too. ...but what if your significant other isn't the hero? What if they're the villain?
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Steve couldn't hide his own initial expression of confusion, telegraphed by pinched eyebrows and a slight frown before it smoothed out again into concern. His arms had automatically loosened to let her move, just his hands against her sides now, and he shifted them restlessly, not quite pulling away, but not sure if she wanted the continued physical contact at the moment.
Screw that, he thought to himself angrily. If Rogue didn't want to be touched, she'd pull away entirely, but he wasn't going to give her a false signal that he was drawing away from her. They'd gone over this, when they'd first deepened their relationship, and he'd witnessed her nightmares first-hand. If she didn't want him anymore, she could walk away, but it wasn't going to be him pushing her away first.
His face settled into a neutral, determined expression. "I don't believe that," he said resolutely. "I don't believe that I don't know you well enough, the things that matter." He thought about his own lies, and barely suppressed a wince. "You're the same funny, energetic, feisty woman I fell in love with, will always be in love with. Even if you tell me your real name is Buffy Summers and you hunt vampires at night, I still know you."
Actually, now that he thought about it, that could potentially explain a lot. Not the time, Rogers, he berated himself. He dared removing one hand from her waist, to reach up and cup her cheek, stroking through the tear tracks with his thumb gently. "Tell me what you lied about, and we'll go from there." His voice was calm and soothing, coaxing, but with a firm undertone. Captain America, wrapped in velvet.
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"What happened to me," she started the list, just barely resisting the urge to lean into that touch on her cheek and give in to the comfort he was offering her. "How I got my scars, how Remy died. Where I'm from. What I am..." The list could go on and on, there were just so many things. But she was starting to calm just a little, anxiety still in place but the sheer panic beginning to fade. For now.
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Steve licked his lower lip, a classic giveaway that he was thinking, before leaning forward to rest his forehead against hers. "Okay," he soothed. "So tell me now."
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But the truth was so much worse.
He was so close to her in that moment as he continued to try to sooth her - she wanted to kiss him, because she was so afraid that it would be her last chance to do so ever again. After he heard what she had to say, she couldn't fathom how they'd ever be okay enough again to kiss or hold each other, let alone so the wonderful things that had led to their current predicament.
"My husband Remy died in a war five years before we met," she explained quietly, starting not at the beginning, but at the first thing that came to mind. "He was trying to keep me safe, but eventually I was captured and locked away for three years. I was... tortured and experimented on because... because I'm not entirely human, not the way you are. And they hated me for it. They hated all of us."
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He should have realized, a part of him berated angrily. He'd put down everything, her nightmares and anxieties, to the trauma of being a witness, being a casualty of violence, to survivor's guilt. It was all of that, but he should have known that it was more, as well. He knew the signs, had seen them first-hand on Bucky; another person he'd known so well, loved with all his heart, who had been hurt and would occasionally get lost in what had happened to him, been done to him. How often had he thought, sitting in the dark after Rogue finally settled, exhausted from screaming and crying-- how many times had he sat and compared the experience to calming Bucky down after awaking from his own nightmares? Things he saw but refused to discuss, menacing anyone who dared come toward him with a glare, and a death-grip on the hilt of his knife, ready to pull it out and defend himself... or end it so no one could hurt him again.
The thousand-yard stare that came over him for no discernible reason... his sudden fear of needles; Rogue's refusal to see doctors. Steve squeezed his eyes shut in a grimace of self-recrimination - not angry at Rogue, but hating himself for not realizing just how much suffering she'd been through. What else had he missed?
I'm not entirely human. Not the way you are. It was those words, oddly enough, that jumped out at him. Shit. This...
It hit him, then, why she was telling him all this, now. He'd been altered by the serum, his very DNA changed, enhanced. He'd picked up enough about modern biology to understand that it meant whatever had been done to him could possibly, if not likely, be passed on to any child of his.
And Rogue knew it, too, because she was... different. She was telling him, because their child might also be different.
Rather than being angry for being lied to, Steve was gripped with sudden, fierce love for Rogue - who was more like him than either of them had realized until now. He reached up to hold her cheeks in both hands, and gave her a long, hard kiss.
"I love you," he said, with utter conviction, staring right into her eyes to make sure she understood just what he was saying. "And... I think the food is gonna have ta wait. We have a lot we need ta sit down an'discuss." His accent started growing thicker, as it did sometimes when he thought about the past, or was gripped with particularly strong emotion. Both were the case right now.
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He was right, though. The only reason she was telling him any of this was because of their child. Because he had a right to know, and without that information being shared, their child might be at risk. As afraid as Rogue was of turning out to be a terrible mother, she knew that her child's safety was paramount, and she would do absolutely anything to keep her family. Including risk her marriage to finally tell the truth after four years of lying.
The kiss wasn't what she expected, but she returned it with enthusiasm, clinging to him until he broke that sweet connection and said those three beautiful words. His comment about dinner even pulled a smile out of her, though it was on the smaller side. It helped that she could hear the change in his accent, which she always noticed and loved, even when it came out when they argued. It was part of him, and she loved every inch of his being.
"It'll keep," she agreed with a tiny nod, lifting her hands to wrap around his. "I love you, Steve," she continued with raw emotion in her voice. "I always have and I always will. No matter what." No matter if he changed his mind after he heard everything she had to say. You could love someone and not be able to be with them, after all.
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"Come on," he said softly, letting his hands fall from her face, but catching her fingers with his. He drew her hand up to his lips and kissed her knuckles. "There's... I need you to tell me. And I know it's gonna be hard, but I absolutely promise you," he told her, while drawing her over to the couch, "that I will listen. And if I don't still love you after you're finished... well, I don' even know, because I can't think of anything you could tell me to make me stop loving you. If you told me you were an axe murderer, I might question your morals..." he joked, internally wincing as he realized her nerves were starting to affect him, making him babble. "But I'd still love you."
Settling on the plush couch, he drew her down against his side; he'd learned over the years that holding Rogue, that solid connection, helped ground her most of the time, and drew her out of her own thoughts, at least somewhat. He was beginning to get an inkling why, if she'd been tortured for years...
So many little things were beginning to add up, making up more than just a picture of Rogue, but of what she'd gone through, that still affected her to this day. Being easily startled; enjoying physical contact, especially skin-to-skin; lashing out if she was unexpectedly grabbed, never wanting her hands held immobile. (That had not been a fun night, because it had been a spur-of-the-moment move, and what had previously been the start of great sex, had ended up a harrowing experience comforting her and apologizing, even though he hadn't realized he'd been doing anything wrong.)
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That's what she was, wasn't it? That was what they whispered in her sleep, what she'd never been able to shake even with the years between the end of the war and now. They were still there, waiting, the ghosts of the people she'd murdered.
She stilled as he settled her beside him and the meaning of what he'd said tried to settle in, but the truth of his words couldn't get past the horror at him saying that one single word that her mind refused to let go of. Murderer.
"But that's what I am," she murmured, her voice distant and detached. "A murderer. They made me kill them, but I could have stopped it. That's what they keep saying, so they must be right." It was beyond her notice that she wasn't making sense anymore.
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"Darling," he murmured, "you have to tell me exactly what's going on. All right? Please tell me." So I can help. He leaned forward to press a kiss just behind her temple.
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"You're going to think I'm crazy," she murmured, looking at her lap so she didn't have to see his reaction. How was she going to put it? There was so much to explain. "I used to be a superhero." The words slipped out before she could really think about them, and they made her blink in surprise. Well, that was one way of doing it.
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Steve all but buried his face in her hair for a few seconds, before murmuring, "Tell me."
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"People like me... we're called mutants," she told him quietly. "We're human, but we're different. There's a tiny genetic difference that allows a mutation to manifest in an infinite number of ways." Taking a deep breath, she squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. "I'm sorry, I used to be better at explaining this. I had to do it so many times..."
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There had to be. What was her mutation? How...how would it affect the baby? And how was this even possible, when he'd never even heard of mutants - mutations, yes, but not mutants as a minority, the way she made it sound, a whole subset of humanity - and yet she made it sound as if the whole thing was common knowledge.
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There were so many things she needed to tell him. It was like facing a mountain that needed to be climbed. "The war... it was to get rid of mutants. All of us, whether we were dangerous or not, were hunted down and rounded up into camps and..." No, no, she was doing this wrong. She was jumping all over the place and missing points and--
"I'm not from this Earth, Steve."
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When she said she wasn't from this Earth, his mind flashed to the Battle of New York, and he realized suddenly, "You showed up when the portal opened. When the tesseract was activated."
His mind was racing through the implications, and he didn't realize that nobody knew what the cube was actually called, or even of it's existence and involvement in the Battle, and it was knowledge that he, Steve the comics artist, shouldn't have.
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"Steve?" she questioned hesitantly, unsure and yet certain she'd heard him correctly. "What are you talking about? I don't know what you mean."
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"I..." he finally sighed, in defeat, and a little relief. "I told you, we have a lot to discuss," he finally said softly. "For now, let's just say, I was there during the Battle, in the thick of it, and learned more than just the average bystander would.
"I don't mean to put pressure on you, but... you're telling me what's going on, with you. I promise, once you've told me, I'll explain my story. But... suffice it to say, I will believe you, alright?"
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"I, uhm..." She took a shaky breath that failed to steady her equally shaky voice. "The war... We were losing. Everyone was losing. Billions of people died. We had to stop it. So we... I helped to... We changed the past, made it so the war never happened. But something- something happened and I ended up here."
There was a lot that she left out, of course. Painful details that would come out before long. But now, at least, pieces of the truth were being laid before him, and he could make his own decisions about things.
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If they'd changed the past... He tried to think about the conversations he'd listened to between Tony and Bruce, even occasionally Natasha would chime in, as well as all the stories involving time travel that he'd read. If they'd changed a significant portion of the past, Rogue should have... ceased to exist, he realized with a shiver. But, a former version of her would have still been around, in the new, changed world they'd created. Instead, whatever they'd done to erase history, had opened a rift, probably at the same time Loki's tesseract portal was open, and it had somehow sucked Rogue in, depositing her here instead of leaving her in her own world.
An entire war could never be summed up in a few sentences, and he recognized the vagueness of her response as a glossing-over of key events, but it was enough for him to get a picture, finally, of what was going on.
Steve leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her forehead, before taking a deep breath. "I didn't travel through time or space. Not like that, although it kind of felt like it, at first. I... you know the Avengers? How everyone thinks Captain America is some new guy they stuffed in the suit, to promote patriotism, or whatever?" Steve had openly scoffed when he heard talk show hosts discussing it, or saw tabloids speculating on who the "New Cap" was. "He's the original guy. He was born in 1918 in Brooklyn. He fought in World War II. And he went down in a plane over the arctic. Except because of the serum... I didn't die. SHIELD found me, and revived me, in 2011. I'm Captain America. The original-- the only one."
He'd never said the words before. He'd thought them, plenty of times, going over them in his head, how precisely he would tell Rogue, but he'd never dreamed he'd actually tell her. He was terrified she wouldn't believe him, or she'd believe him and become angry at lying to her about something so huge and ongoing for so many years. He was terrified SHIELD would find out, and he wouldn't be able to continue fighting.
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But lord, what a day this was turning out to be. Captain America. She was married to Captain America. Just that day, she'd worried that her artist husband had been trapped in his office while the world went crazy outside the door, but instead he'd been right there in the thick of it, risking his life to keep the world safe. And all those missions she'd read about, seen reported on television. All those times things had seemed terrible and the public had worried that one of the Avengers might not make it out of this one... What if he hadn't? Even superheroes could be killed, she knew that all too well.
That terrifying thought shot through her and only seconds had passed when she suddenly threw her arms around his neck and clung to him as tightly as she could. She was too scared to cry, but she trembled slightly and gripped his shirt in her fingers, knuckles turning white from the pressure. "All those times I could have lost you..." It was barely a whisper, but she held him even tighter, and it felt like she was falling apart.
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"I wanted to tell you," he said in a hoarse whisper against her neck. "I--there were so many times, I wanted to, I swear. But you can't know-- no one can, except my teammates. Welcome to the 21st Century, Cap - if you want your shield back, you gotta sign this nondisclosure," he muttered, more to himself, but it was a fairly succinct explanation. "I don't know why they don't want anyone to know-- but sometimes I didn't want you to know, either," he said, in a true whisper this time; confessing his selfish thoughts and actions. "I didn't want you to worry, I didn't want you to be at risk, just by knowing who I was. I was glad you didn't know." His voice cracked on his last words, and he squeezed his eyes shut against the tears forming there, pressing his face to Rogue's skin, hoping she didn't pull away, but still terrified that any minute she would.
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"I never wanted to tell you," she confessed in her own broken whisper, the world disappearing beyond their little bubble that was being slowly shattered into pieces. "I never wanted you to know what I am, what I've done. What if you hated me for it, or what if someone found out and put me in another lab? I couldn't survive that again." Tears stung at her eyes and her throat was so tight she could barely get the words out. "I'm sorry, I didn't want to tell you. I'm sorry." But even then she held on to him, refusing to let go unless he made her.
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...of course she didn't. Just because he'd told her he was Captain America, didn't mean she'd had a chance to really understand the full ramifications of what that meant. She knew he fought in battles against things, entities that the police and army couldn't handle. But he wasn't a soldier anymore, and she'd never seen him as one.
"I am never gonna hate you. Marie," he said softly, using her given name like a prayer, a touchstone for both of them. "And I'm never gonna let anything happen to you. Nobody's gonna find out anything, okay? I promise."
If he could lie to the person who knew him best for over 4 years, he could lie to protect her with no remorse.
"You have nothing to be sorry about." He pulled back and pressed a firm kiss to her lips. "I love you, and I'm not angry. I'm never gonna be angry about you trying to protect yourself. Even from me. Okay?"
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The kiss was too brief, and her heart raced because with each second she felt their time together was growing shorter. Their little world, perfect for the two of them, was crumbling under their feet and it was her fault.
"But I should have been protecting you," she protested weakly, looking at his shoulder instead of meeting his gaze. "All these years, I could have... Those nights I woke up screaming and wouldn't let you touch me? I could have killed you. My mutation is in my skin; I absorb the life force of other people through touch."
It sounded monstrous, and she felt like a monster.
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"We've touched plenty of times," he finally said gently. "You've never hurt me. And I know you, Rogue." He still spoke softly, but his voice grew firm with conviction. "If you'd honestly thought you would hurt me on a random day, you would've run. You would've made an excuse, or tried to break my heart, or maybe just packed up and left me a Dear John note, but you would've left, to try and protect me. You never did. And I trust that judgment."
He could already tell that this was going to be a harrowing discussion, and much like when she had nightmares, he would have to comfort Rogue in any way he could. He never minded that; only the fact that she felt this way in the first place. But it was always exhausting, emotionally and mentally, for both of them. He felt selfish for wishing she didn't feel that way, too; she wouldn't be the Rogue he knew if she didn't feel so strongly.
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