6781/1943: The Trolley Problem

1943: The Trolley Problem
Date of Scene:	03 July 2021
Location:	A rooftop in Brooklyn, 1943
Synopsis:	Cael and Sam bond over a bottle of whiskey and their shared dislike of time travel.
Cast of Characters:	Sam Wilson, Cael Becker, James Barnes

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Sam Wilson has posed:
    Sam doesn't question how Cael gets her hands on a bottle of whiskey. They probably don't have the money for that, but at the same time what does he know? Maybe all it costs is a a shiny silver dollar and a hay penny. He's not even sure what a hay penny is, to be perfectly honest.

    Point being, alcohol yes, thieving no, but if he doesn't ask then Sam is perfectly willing to live in the land of make believe and plausible deniability.

    "You really did that," he says, voice pointedly flat for comedic effect as he takes a swig from the bottle and passes it back. They're on a roof near where the rest of the team is either bedded down for the night, planning their next moves, or possibly trying to MacGuyver a time machine--Sam's not going to put anything past Shuri, even in 1943, okay?--contributing nothing of value. Which, after a night like tonight, Sam's okay with. Let someone else do the heavy lifting.

    He leans his elbows on his knees, looking over the edge towards the ground, legs dangling. The last thing Sam's scared of is heights, after all, and there are plenty of real boogeymen living in this era for him to fear. "We could go kill Hitler, you know," he says thoughtfully. "I mean, we know where he is right now. I have wings. We could take him out."

Cael Becker has posed:
    "I really did," Cael agrees with a giddy laugh. Her high from that little encounter still hasn't worn off completely. She takes a swig from the bottle, listening to Sam talk - amusement quirking her lips. "We could," she agrees. "Do those wings - they don't have the range to cross the Atlantic, do they? And what sort of energy to they use as fuel? Can you refuel them here?" Yes. She's pointing out possible logical problems in this plan.
    "Because honestly - we'd save how many millions of lives? That would lead to a better world, right? Would we... reappear in that new world? Whether or not we would even exist anymore, because maybe our grandparents, married other people instead? Or would we create... a new, alternate timeline? Where maybe we don't exist, but the world is better, and Bucky lives a better, happier life and dies in the year... 2010 at the ripe ol' age of 90 or whatever? And then we teleport back to our own, shitty existance, anyways?"
    She takes a second swig, and offers the bottle back. "None of this makes sense."

Sam Wilson has posed:
    Sam leans back on one arm and stares up at the night sky. It's not really much clearer here than it is in 2021; less light pollution, sure, but more pollution-pollution. Leaded gasoline was invented in 1923 and it's still in use, after all. "Uh, lemme think." His eyes narrow and he crunches a few numbers in his head. "The nanotech fuel cells are at 73% charge right now, so that's... just nine thousand kilometers at cruising speed. I'd have to catch a ride back, but...."

    A whole lot of words come spilling out of Cael after that, and maybe Sam's just sitting there thinking about killing Hitler--which is somehow soothing, despite the inherent violence of it--but then he sighs. He takes the bottle back but doesn't immediately drink from it.

    "The thing is, and I can't tell you how I know, but trust me when I say there are people in place who could easily take over if Hitler was out of the way. I'm not going to argue that they'd be worse, because... you know, it's fucking Hitler, but." Now Sam drinks, one long gulp that has him clearing his throat a little bit after he's swallowed. The bottle is then sat down in the space between them. "So maybe it wouldn't help at all. Maybe HYDRA ends up taking over the world and that's how we leave it, or worse, we teleport back and get to cosplay Man in the High Castle for the rest of our probably short lives. All I want to do is run back down to that bar and try to convince Bucky to not go over there, but--that wouldn't work, anyway. He doesn't know me, he wouldn't listen, and I don't even want to think about where I'd end up if I get sectioned because I start spouting off about time travel."

    He snorts, and it's dry, humorless. "I'll be the first to tell you that the way we handle mental health in America is pretty garbage, but it was even worse back in the day. They used electroconvulsive therapy and transorbital lobotomies as cure-alls, and the conditions they kept people in when they were committed to asylums...." Maybe it's just the chill of the night--Sam's stripped down to just his slacks and undershirt--but a shiver works its way down his spine. "Shuri wasn't all that far off, calling our medicine primitive."

Cael Becker has posed:
    "I mean. There are other options than convincing him not to go. Which - I mean, we can't. He's signed on the dotted line. He's enlisted, he has his orders. We'd be ruining his life in a different way - if we convinced him not to go." Cael takes the bottle back for another swig before she adds, "And ruining it in yet another way if we made him unfit for service." Because that would mean maiming him. And //fuck// - she's not going to do that.
    "I want to save him," she says quietly. "But... even without worrying about time paradoxes of Man in the High Castle issues or whatever - can you honestly think of a way we can do so? I think it has to play out."
    She lets out a heavy sigh. "If Barnes doesn't go to war... he doesn't become the Winter Soldier, I never meet him, and I end up dead and buried under saguaro cactus. We never meet. This conversation never even happens.
    "...fucking time travel, man."

Sam Wilson has posed:
    There's a long pause. Considering. Maybe even calculating.

    Finally: "We could kidnap him," Sam says, or rather, Sam doesn't manage not to stop his brain from forcing out of his mouth. Immediately after he rolls his eyes fully at his own nonsense, and then scrubs a hand over his face. "Okay, no, we're not going to do anything except sit here and just get drunk because you're right. We can't change anything."

    Sam had sat that bottle down with some finality but then he's reaching, waving at Cael to hand it back over, because yeah. Just get drunk. "I'm acknowledging that this is not a healthy coping mechanism," he states before he takes a swig. "You know Cap's story, right? Signs up, gets juiced, goes over to Europe--ends up saving the 107th from a HYDRA base." Sam's pretty sure this is all common knowledge stuff. "That's where he meets up with the Howling Commandos. And Buck's a sniper, so you can't tell me there weren't at least a few moments where he put a bullet in someone that would have otherwise taken Cap out. Because sure, super soldier, whatever, but that doesn't mean invincible!"

    He's gesturing with the bottle here, amped up, because this is something of a sticking point for him. Also he's maybe a little tipsy. "Despite what they want you to believe. So if we do anything, Cap probably ends up dead, which means he never gets defrosted and he's not there to help fight Loki when he attacks New York, and that's how we end up responsible for a bunch of elves and frost giants taking over the world."

    With a sigh, Sam falls backwards to sprawl out on the rooftop, staring upwards. "Fucking time travel," he agrees.

James Barnes has posed:
    Exactly two houses down on the right and across the street from where the rest of the team is holed up, James Buchanan Barnes is also sitting on a rooftop, the one that belongs to his childhood home. He's smoking a cigarette, something he hasn't done in decades, but it seems right here, comfortable and familiar.

    He's sitting up next to the chimney, near the top of the roof, leaning back against the brick. The cherry from the end of his cigarette flaring bright like a little beacon with each drag.

    This night was so long ago, but being here brings things back to focus in his Swiss cheese brain. A bar fight, a black man, a white woman. He remembers those things now, but the details are still fuzzy, still blurry, still just a random encounter with two 'strangers'. No, that's not what's being made sharp again.

    "...it won't change me one bit."

    All alone on that rooftop, with no one to bear witness because it wouldn't happen if there was someone there, Bucky weeps for the stupid kid that believed that to be true. It's not full on ugly crying, mind. It's silent tears searing a hot path down his scruffy cheeks.

    It goes on as long as it can, until there's just nothing left. He's all cried out and dried up when he finally pushes himself to his feet and flicks his cigarette butt off the roof into the street below.

    He knows, well, that he won't be home tonight, the other him, he's out drinking until dawn. So, he crawls back into the window of the attic bedroom that used to - does? Belong to him and stretches out on the bed. The heat from the June day sun clings to the room stubbornly, but he doesn't notice it. He's been in hotter spots since the last time he laid in that bed.

    If he had to do it all again, knowing what he knows now? Would he? Those are the thoughts racing through his mind as he stares up at the ceiling, cracked in spots and water stained - they were never wealthy, the Barnes family.

    Yes, yes he would. He would do it all again. Not just for the reasons Sam points out, although Steve is a big part of the 'yes' answer to the question, a huge part, the absolute solid, 100 percent - 'til the end of the line part. But there's also Sam, Cael, Sharon, hell even Shuri. He'd live the hell of the Winter Soldier a thousand times over to save them and ... he only had to do it once, right? It was a small price to pay.

Cael Becker has posed:
    "...didn't even think about that one," Cael admits in a morose voice. She lets out a heavy sigh. "He was so... happy down there." At that bar. "Care free. Optimistic. He's going to go save the world, and come home, to his girl who's waiting for him..." She shakes her head. "Fuck." She leans forward abruptly, resting her arms on her legs, and staring down at the floor in front of her gloomily. "What a mess."
    She lapses into a long silence before finally asking something that's been eating at her - eating at her for a while, even if she's been hesitant to bring it up. That was the truth of it - hesitant. She could make all the excuses in the world that there hadn't been a time to ask. She hadn't been sure she //wanted// to know.
    "What exactly did Barnes tell you?" she asks. "That day he introduced us. About me, about him - about how we met?"

Sam Wilson has posed:
    "Butterfly Effect," Sam says, repeating his reference from earlier in the day. "Chances are there's a hundred thousand other things that would change if we did anything about it, and it's a coin flip to say whether they're good or bad changes."

    So there it is. The trolley's barreling down the tracks; Bucky's life free from seventy years of HYDRA torture and brainwashing tied down on the tracks right in front of it, then a lever, to divert the trolley onto a side track with potentially the lives of billions on the line. Potentially. "I know it's not true, but it feels like I'm serving him up on a silver platter for HYDRA right now," he admits. Which is mostly the alcohol talking, because Sam's too pragmatic to let that guilt lay on his conscience for real.

    He's quiet while she's quiet, hands folded over his stomach. Laying like that, staring up at the familiar night sky over New York City, Sam can almost convince himself that they're back home. Almost. But, again. Too pragmatic.

    "Not much." He goes quiet then, brow furrowed, having to muddle his way past the mental weight of mild intoxication to call up the memory in question. "You helped him out when he was on the run one time, something like that? You were just a kid. In..." Pittsburgh? Philly? "Phoenix?" That sounds about right.

Cael Becker has posed:
    Cael winces - then lets out a sigh of frustration. It's... fine. Not a big deal. Right? "Who helped who is up for debate," she remarks. "It's why... standing by and letting all this happen," she gestures towards the city, "is so frustrating." But what choice is there?
    She taps her finger on her opposite arm as she considers her options in silence. Leave well enough alone and presume it'll never be a problem - or point a finger at her secret, and assume Sam would never put her at risk? "I need you to do me a favor, Sam," she finally says. "You can't tell anyone Barnes and I met in Phoenix. Or that I've ever been there at all, really. Please."
    She's not really one for social niceities in general. She wasn't a 'please and thank you' kind of a gal. But there it was anyways. 'Please.'

Sam Wilson has posed:
    Sam's quiet again, tracking constellations in the sky as the moon rises slow and steady. There's not really much he has left to say at this point, though he does make a vague noise of agreement at the word 'frustrating'. Certainly one way to put it, with slightly less swearing than he's already coming to expect from Cael.

    "Sure," is all Sam says. Yeah, that's it. It's not like Sam to sweat something like that, which seems like nothing much to him in the grand scheme of things.

    He pushes himself up, first into a seated position, and then all the way onto his feet. "Come on, we're not doing ourselves any good up here." He offers a hand down to Cael.

Cael Becker has posed:
    Just like that. 'Sure.' No prodding. No prying. No doubt or accusations. Just 'sure.' As easy that.
    Cael looks up at Sam - then holds out her hand to him - letting him haul her up to her feet, as she picks back up the bottle of whiskey that had been sitting between them. "You're a good man, Sam Wilson," she says quietly. "You know that?"
    Then more loudly she adds, "And FUCK those back-asswards BIGOTS who can't see past their own inadequacies to see that.
    "YOU HEAR THAT, 1943? FUCK YOU. YOU'RE THE WORST TIMELINE," she shouts into the dark - before letting out a sigh.
    "...yeah. We should go back in," she decides, casually linking arms with the man - so they can both go inside.

Sam Wilson has posed:
    It's a nice thing to hear. Sure, Sam generally feels pretty solid about the choices he makes and the things he believes in, because his parents brought him up to know right from wrong. But he's human, and he has doubts the same as anyone else, so it really does honestly help to have someone say that to him.

    He's just opened his mouth to say something heartfelt in thanks when Cael starts to yell. His shoulders go up nearly to his ears and he stumbles through a "Why are you yelling?" but Cael is definitely doing that, yep, yes she is. He stares at her until she's done and then stares at her for a little bit longer before he blows out the air in his lungs, all of it caught there since she started.

    Maybe it's a bit hard to see the nuances of his expression in the dark, but some of the tension that was there is now gone. "Well, you're not wrong," is what he finally decides on, giving her arm a casual pat before he leads them back downstairs.

    "You think Steve's old enough to know what a hay penny is?"