PARADOX.✧･*

Curiosity had always gotten the better of him; sometimes in the best of ways and sometimes in the worst. Before the war, before the serum he’d always allowed his curiosity to lead him into trouble and now it seemed as if his curiosity was going to lead him to answers he wasn’t certain he was ready to hear. He couldn’t keep wandering the halls of the Triskelion, he couldn’t just wonder if he’d heard the voice correctly or if something or someone was playing a trick on him. Steve knew the only way to find the answers to his questions was to follow the sound of the voice. Even if the answers would only lead to more questions, even if it would have him being dragged back to the past he needed to know for his own sanity. Otherwise, he knew he’d spend far too many days wondering.

The smell of freshly brewed coffee was what finally dragged him into doing something. It may have been his curiosity that initiated his desires, but it was coffee that finally tipped him over that edge. Not that it did anything to him. A downside to the serum; certain things didn’t affect them like they used to and coffee was one of them. Alcohol had been another but he didn’t like to think about how they’d found that out. His chest still felt the ache of the loss of his best friend and Steve didn’t want to think about that more than he had to. If he found out that Bucky’s date had somehow survived the war it was going to bring all of those thoughts rushing to the surface.

Following his nose, he stopped dead in his tracks as his worst fear had come to life. Standing there was Bucky’s date, looking like she hadn’t aged a bit since he last saw her. Except that wasn’t possible. She had to have aged, she had to have died considering how many of the others from his time were already gone. Or she could’ve ended up like Peggy. But looking like she’d just walked out of the expo? Steve knew it was impossible and it had him wondering if there was something else going on. “No, thanks,” was all he could say, the words he needed to say something that wouldn’t come to him. How could they? He was still adjusting to this new time period and now — now he was seeing a ghost from the past. “How?”

               Needless to say, working for SHIELD was not the strangest thing she’d ever done. In fact, it didn’t even make a ‘top ten’ list if she’d ever sit down to make one, though she does keep track of them in her head. Rather, it feels normal — not quite as normal as being a teacher, though that was simply too normal and a life she couldn’t return to anymore, not after acquiring a taste ( it was more along the lines of a craving, an addiction, though she hadn’t the mind to admit that to anyone, even to herself ) for the strange and unnatural.

The inklings of a laugh escaped her — how could it not? Clara didn’t take the question in the way that it was meant; no, she lacked the proper context. There was a feeling somewhere in the back of her mind, one that only ever seemed to appear when she saw someone familiar up-close, only not familiar to her as she was now. Yet, the feeling was also to be confused with nervousness, and meeting someone such as Captain America was sure to make anyone a little nervous; Clara, in all her confidence and cool composure, was hardly an exception. It also explained why she hadn’t noticed that he was looking at her strangely, as if she was a ghost standing there just with the purpose of haunting him.

sleeping at last: drops Cassini me: completely and utterly rekt

     “That’s– what I used to think, yeah,” said David with the air of someone REMINISCING. “Telepathy’s an– invasion, it’s– it’s RUDE and I should have more respect for people’s mental– mental whatever– privacy, right?” The easy excuse would be to harp on how much TIME an act now, beg for forgiveness later approach to mind reading saved, but David had a sense that wouldn’t gain him much headway. He wasn’t used to dealing with fellow nonlinears. “But it’s– I’ve sorta found it’s BETTER if I don’t ask. Easier, at least. Like– now I just– I don’t have to wonder about you, or– this. I can focus on your questions.”

Palms out in half a surrender, David started in on an introduction. “My name’s David. I’m– David Haller, and I’m– well, I’m DEAD, sorta. So we have that in common.” An ill-timed joke, maybe, but David muscled past any regret the way he’d apparently muscled past the TARDIS’s defenses. “I’m not– sure how I got in here, but IMPOSSIBLE is kinda my– my entire resume nowadays.” He couldn’t help the smile that broke across his face as he listened to Clara’s thoughts catch. “Something ELSE we have in common, I guess.”

               “Well, it’s rude, yeah.” For emphasis, index finger pointed at her temple and then towards him, just for the clarification that her own thoughts were just that —— hers, and not for him to go poking around in there. “Consider a ‘no trespassing’ sign sittin’ just outside my brain.” Not to say she hadn’t dealt with telepathic races before, though that was different as it was their custom and they couldn’t speak aloud, and weren’t intrusive.

EYEBROWS RAISE, brown eyes narrow as he considers her words. Time travel? well that one’s new.  ❝Emperor of where?❞ curiosity blossoms and the mechanic can already feel an overwhelming amount of questions forming in that brain of his.  ❝You’re a hundred p e r c e n t serious aren’t you? which makes you either               a fantasist           or capable of doing something that should be IMPOSSIBLE.❞ He wants to b e l i e v e in the latter, the thought of such technology made Tony’s heart almost skip a beat.  ❝What was Leo like?❞

               “Space. All of it,” she said with a quick and wild grin. Her eyes practically lit up as she gave a nod; Clara loved what she was able to do, though to not be able to share it was almost heartbreaking, and caught her in a mass of tangled lies. Of course, though, she came so alive in the moments where she could share it, no need to separate the different lives she was forced to lead. “Serious as can be. Maybe I’m both.”