(no subject)

[stephrogers]

The mellow dance hall had an old timey feel to it: wooden paneling, sweethearts dancing slowly with each other as the gentle music of a big band song played. Steph was standing to the side, searching over the slow moving couples to see if she could find...if she could find him. But something was off. She knew she wasn't in the 40s anymore. She knew that. She was wearing her new Captain America uniform. One that Coulson designed. Yet...yet the setting looked just like home. And there was hope in her chest that Bucky was just really late.

No. This was a dream. It had to be.

Comments

the ones that disappeared in my 50 edits XD /you're sweet to be patient

[waterfell]

Bucky Barnes. Something tugged at her mind, like she should know the name, but Ami had never been one to read many comics, whether Western or Japanese. She shook her head.

"Never heard of him." She didn't seem to find this nearly as important as it was to Stephanie. An idea occurred to her, seeing a girl waiting for a boy. "He didn't stand you up, did he?"

XD No worries!

[stephrogers]

Stand her up? Steph looked around. Bucky would never stand her up. "He can't." She shook her head, trying to clear it of the fuzzy thoughts. "No, he wouldn't." She looked down at the star emblazoned on her chest then at the girl. "Bucky would never stand me up. And...and he wouldn't be here. He's--"

It hurt more than it normally did to say it.

Re: XD No worries!

[waterfell]

It's not a commentary on Stephanie when Ami assumes that. It's a commentary on how easy it is for someone to be left behind, forgotten. But that answer only makes her frown.

"If he wouldn't be here," she points out, "Why look for him here?" This, too, is not precisely said to Stephanie so much as to herself. She looks for the wrong things, in the wrong places, always.

[stephrogers]

This has happened before. Steph shook her head to try and clear it before looking at the girl in her eyes. "Miss, where am I really? I know this isn't--" Isn't home wasn't the right phrase because home would be 1943. She's been in this place before, always fighting a non-yielding crowd to look for Bucky.

"I don't know." She looked back at the dancing couples again. "I--I'm sorry." She gave the girl an apologetic smile.

[waterfell]

It was a bad question; it only served to call Ami's mind to the fact that she didn't know exactly where they were, couldn't remember coming to the club, only being here and she didn't like that all-too-familiar feeling of something strange about herself.

Of course, she didn't say this. Instead, she named the club. That much, she was sure of.

[stephrogers]

"The Stork Club?" Steph looked around again. No Peggy. No Bucky. Not even Howard. She frowned and looked back at the girl. "And...what's your name?"

[waterfell]

"Ami Mizuno," she named her family second. "Pleased to meet you." The courtesy seemed slightly tacked-on as an afterthought, habitual.

"I haven't been to this type of club before, so I thought it would be interesting for tonight."

[stephrogers]

"Nice to meet you too." Mizuno. That was Japanese. Like Morita. She nodded and felt a strange sensation. She looked down to see herself wearing a dark blue dance hall dress, something she would've worn to go out with Peggy back then. "You haven't seen Bucky at all, right?"

[waterfell]

Ami seemed far too unfazed by the change of clothes. In fact, she barely seemed to notice it at all; though her uniform remained.

"He's not here," she says. This is more precisely a way to say I haven't seen him and I'm not particularly inclined to look, since she hasn't exactly searched the place and asked everyone here. But as far as she's concerned, there's no Bucky.

[stephrogers]

He wasn't here. "Are you here with friends or...?" she asked, trying to play along.

[waterfell]

Ami smiled again. "I'm making new friends instead," she told Stephanie. This was very easy to do - with the proper spell, with the proper qualities, or in a dream. "It seemed fun!"

[stephrogers]

"Oh! Well have you made many new friends?" she asked. Maybe if Morita was around...she could see if he could ask Ami to dance.

[waterfell]

No, Ami was too pleased with herself to simply answer. "Didn't you see it yourself?" she pointed out. "I've met a lot of people."

[stephrogers]

"Oh." Steph felt teh blush creeping up on her neck. "I'm sorry. I thought. Uh..."

[waterfell]

Ami made a small dismissive noise. Something about her smile suggested teasing, perhaps with a slight edge to it, but she was very definite about what she said.

"You were only thinking of finding that man."

[stephrogers]

Another sheepish smile. "Yeah. He gets into trouble a lot." Though there was an odd feeling about this woman, now that Steph was closer.

[waterfell]

Surely nothing more than Stephanie's mind playing tricks on her. Or maybe it's the fact Ami doesn't belong in this place, this era, or to anything else about this dream, a foreign element tipping Stephanie's mind off to its creation.

"You shouldn't think about only one thing like that," she advises. Still, if she were to spot him, she might point him towards Stephanie. Might.

[stephrogers]

"Oh I'm not...I'm not good at this kind of thing." Dancing. Flirting. It wasn't just the girl that tipped her off. But the fact that Steph was taller. She looked down at her clothes. Nearly everything else was...perfect. The smiles, the music.

[waterfell]

Good. A lot of the worst things in Ami's world happened because of relationships between people who simply didn't let go - while the price was paid by everyone around them. But she's told herself not every relationship has to be like that, and she seemed to accept Stephanie's answer.

"So are you staying here, or going to look for him?"

[stephrogers]

"Maybe..." She hesitated a little. "Maybe I'll stay here and wait for him. He could just be late." She shuffled uneasily. At one point, she was small enough to cough and pretend she was sick and retreat back home but now...it wasn't the case.

[waterfell]

"In my experience," Ami offered, "It's not worth waiting for someone who won't come." It was not that she doubted Bucky in specific; it was that she doubted nearly everyone in this way.

"If you're that eager to find him, you were right to keep looking instead."

[stephrogers]

"Perhaps I should," Steph replied. Something just felt off about the whole thing. And she shook her head, feeling a little dizzy. There were so many conflicting ideas.

[waterfell]

"Or," Ami suggested, "Ask yourself where he'd be if he decided not to meet you."

She'd never known, herself, that when her comrades hadn't come to save her, they had been in battle themselves. She had assumed they simply didn't see her as worth coming for. Probably, she thinks, they'd been safe in their homes.

[stephrogers]

"He'd be here," Steph insisted. Bucky would never leave her like this. Not floundering on her own. Even if he had a date with him. But a loud blaring started to fill the entire room and the people began to disappear slowly.

"What the--?"

[waterfell]

It might have been the idea of Bucky waiting, or waiting for Bucky, that was enough to start to rouse Ami from her sleep. Whatever it was, the blaring noise melded itself into the alarms and shrill birdsong of a spring morning as she faded from sight, too.