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I wrote this story, but I don't remember where it was headed:
Apologies for the formatting, it's copypasta'd straight from my word processor.
Straight On Til Morning
There are things you don't look at.
There's a reason they tell children to put the covers over their heads when the monsters come, a reason they say don’t watch, a reason they told the hunters not to go into the dark places.
Sometimes it’s better not to know the worst.
–
America, corrupt and broken; behold your power!
“Take it down,” Maria told Skye. “Scrub what you have to scrub, break what you have to break, do what you have to do. But take as much of it down as you can manage and infect the rest.”
“I can go after them.”
“No.” Maria holds the young woman’s gaze with the intensity of a lion tamer. Phil trusts Skye, and Maria trusts Phil, so Maria trusts Skye. At least for the moment. “You’re needed here, taking that filth down.”
“Everyone will have it in their heads after the first viewing.”
“But at least it won’t stay there!”
There’ll be nightmares, of course. In the time of the old Roman bread-and-circuses, life wasn’t sanitised and bloodless, death distant and medical-clean.
Today, in spite of first-person shooters and cinematic gore, most people have never seen death – real death, painful and tortured and bloody and brutal.
It’s one thing to throw people to the lions. It’s quite another to watch them being torn apart.
–
The hell of it is that she gets to hold things together. Fury is ‘dead’. Phil is ‘dead’. Even if they’re both alive, there’s no time for the shock, the disbelief, the anger, the questions, and the need-to-knows.
So Maria’s it.
She’s known in S.H.I.E.L.D and out of it, thanks to her work with Stark Industries and the Senate Inquiry. Pepper might do in a pinch, but she’d need to work with Natasha for the S.H.I.E.L.D side – and while Pepper can do limelight and bald truth, Natasha’s first instincts are to deny, lie, and look for the exits.
They can’t do that anymore.
Besides, Pepper’s got enough burdens on her right now; Maria won’t add to them.
--
And I have absolutely no idea where I was taking it.
Was the bad guy Loki? The Mandarin (the real one, not Trev)? Zola? Someone else? I can't even remember anymore.
Apologies for the formatting, it's copypasta'd straight from my word processor.
Straight On Til Morning
There are things you don't look at.
There's a reason they tell children to put the covers over their heads when the monsters come, a reason they say don’t watch, a reason they told the hunters not to go into the dark places.
Sometimes it’s better not to know the worst.
–
America, corrupt and broken; behold your power!
“Take it down,” Maria told Skye. “Scrub what you have to scrub, break what you have to break, do what you have to do. But take as much of it down as you can manage and infect the rest.”
“I can go after them.”
“No.” Maria holds the young woman’s gaze with the intensity of a lion tamer. Phil trusts Skye, and Maria trusts Phil, so Maria trusts Skye. At least for the moment. “You’re needed here, taking that filth down.”
“Everyone will have it in their heads after the first viewing.”
“But at least it won’t stay there!”
There’ll be nightmares, of course. In the time of the old Roman bread-and-circuses, life wasn’t sanitised and bloodless, death distant and medical-clean.
Today, in spite of first-person shooters and cinematic gore, most people have never seen death – real death, painful and tortured and bloody and brutal.
It’s one thing to throw people to the lions. It’s quite another to watch them being torn apart.
–
The hell of it is that she gets to hold things together. Fury is ‘dead’. Phil is ‘dead’. Even if they’re both alive, there’s no time for the shock, the disbelief, the anger, the questions, and the need-to-knows.
So Maria’s it.
She’s known in S.H.I.E.L.D and out of it, thanks to her work with Stark Industries and the Senate Inquiry. Pepper might do in a pinch, but she’d need to work with Natasha for the S.H.I.E.L.D side – and while Pepper can do limelight and bald truth, Natasha’s first instincts are to deny, lie, and look for the exits.
They can’t do that anymore.
Besides, Pepper’s got enough burdens on her right now; Maria won’t add to them.
--
And I have absolutely no idea where I was taking it.
Was the bad guy Loki? The Mandarin (the real one, not Trev)? Zola? Someone else? I can't even remember anymore.