milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Steve comes through the door in his dress uniform, looking hollow-eyed and grim. He goes to the Bar and drops a pile of Army scrip on the top.

"A bottle of Atlantean, please," and then adds, "And some paper and a pen, and a poppy from Remembrance Day, if you have one."

The Bar delivers. Perhaps with an air of concern.

"Thank you, ma'am," Steve says and, in big dark letters that are nothing like his usual cheerful hand, writes:

IN MEMORIAM
SGT. JAMES BUCHANAN BARNES
1918-1944

and pins it to the bulletin board, along with the poppy.

He then takes the bottle and goes to the darkest, least visible booth he can find.

[ooc: Feel free to have your pup react to Steve's announcement, but please PM or email me before tagging Steve as he is in a Very, Very Bad Place. Thanks.

All threads millitimed to before the thread with Orpheus, please.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

For once, the dog doesn't go looking for food. He's familiar with that tone and that posture in humans. You see a lot of it when you live where he does. So he just whines a little and does his best to lick Steve's hand, because when you're a dog that's pretty much what you know how to do.

"I saw the sign," Ellen murmurs as she approaches. "I'm so sorry."

Steve bends to rest his forehead on Dogmeat's head for a moment.

"Hey, Ellen," he says and salutes her with the bottle of Atlantean.

Ellen offers a small gesture of salute in return. "Dogmeat can stay with you, if you like," she says. "He's... he's good at being there."

She's not always great with words, alas, but.

"Thanks."

He gestures to the seat on the other side of the booth. "You can stay too, if you want."

"Sure."

She slides into the booth, and waves to one of the rats. Steve might be able to handle Atlantean, but for her whiskey is about as far up the scale as it goes.

"Should I ask how, or-" She hesitates; she's remembering Gene. "You- you don't have to say anything, if you- if you don't want to. It's all right."

"Nothing to say.

"Bucky's dead. It's my fault."

He has a swig.

"I have a hard time believing that," Ellen says, and pauses. A little because she's not sure what to say; a little because she's remembering Dad, in the control room with Colonel Autumn, right- before.

Well.

Maybe she can think of something.

"Shoulda made him go home."

Ellen shakes her head, just a little. "I didn't know him well," she said, "but from what I did know... he wouldn't have listened."

"He didn't listen. Never listened to me. Except when he shouldn't have."

"People can be like that," Ellen says. "Especially when somebody really matters to them."

"He'd been a POW. He could have gone home and no one would've looked at him funny. He stayed for me."

"Maybe," says Ellen, "but-"

She remembers the way Bucky had looked when her Gauss rifle annihilated its target. That was not the kind of face you get from just fighting, or even seeing something dreadful at close range. That was much too personal a look.

"I don't know how- how much of that was him not wanting to leave a friend, and how much of that was because he was the kind of man who finished what he started. I- I don't know that he would have been the same man you knew if he were the kind of man who could just walk away from the fight before it was done."

The rat arrives with Ellen's glass; she hands it several bottlecaps. After a moment she adds a few more and says, "Come back with an apple. Or- or two."

"He was good at being a soldier," Steve admits in a grudging tone. "Best sharpshooter in the European theater."

Ellen nods. "I think he want- wanted to do as much as he could," she says. "For his country, the world- whatever. He- he was fighting before you were, right?"

(She's starting to hate that blasted stammer; it comes out under stress, at all the moments when she needs it to go away the most. But what can you do.)

"He was drafted before I was," Steve mutters. "He was 1-A while I was still trying to get a recruitment center to look at me."

Drafted. Crud. If he'd enlisted on his own- well, no help for it now.

"I'm sorry, I didn't realize," she says. "The point is- even if it wasn't his idea at first, he seemed like- like the kind of man who finished what he started. Always. No giving up."

"Brooklyn stubbornness," says Steve with a ghost of a smile. "Like Nathan's hot dogs."

He knows she won't get it. He's not in a place to care.

"You- you mentioned those once? I think?" Ellen says. "It- it sounds familiar. From where you two grew up?"

"Yeah. Nathan's Famous. We grew up eatin' 'em."

She nods, and after a minute, holds out one of the apples the wait-rat brought.

"Might not- might not be a, a, a hot dog, but... you look like you could use one of these, just now. I remember that part, too. You told me."

He looks at the apple.

"Thanks," he says quietly and takes it. He rubs his thumb over the peel before he bites in.

"I know it's not much," Ellen says, "and- and you can handle an awful lot of liquor, but... it's still not good, drinking that much on an empty stomach."

"My metabolism is four times faster than average," says Steve. "My stomach's usually empty."

".... oh."

Pause.

"Um. I'll just... see about getting my foot out of my mouth?"