Reality in Motion

turn the tables

Over the past three months, there had been good days and bad days at Sunrise Retirement Home. She hadn't been there for all of them, nor had she heard about all of them. Most of the time she only heard about the good days - knowing that if he shrugged his shoulders and gave a non-committal answer, it meant it was a bad day. When it was a bad day, she never tried to push him to talk about it; she was sure it was tough enough to see Agent Carter like that.

Sometimes, if his visit was scheduled for the evening, she accompanied him to the home - staying downstairs and working on one of the puzzles during his visit. She didn't want to intrude on his time with with Agent Carter, knowing how important it was for both of them. The home was nice enough to send her reports on how helpful the visits were for Agent Carter - when it was a good day at least.

Even though he never talked about his past with her, Q knew that there was quite a history between the two. She had read the files and heard the stories from inside of SHIELD but after seeing the compass and noting his reaction to it...clearly there was much more to the story than what was in the files and whatever rumors floated around SHIELD. But that was on the list of topics that he refused to talk about - just like Bucky was.

After he opened up about Bucky, she hoped he would be a little less guarded about opening up about other things. But he wasn't: using the same techniques he used in the past whenever she tried to bring up Agent Carter. Deflect and redirect. She would just have to be patient.

Her puzzle was almost done when she heard the ding of the elevator. Glancing over, she saw Cap stepping out - hands stuffed into his jeans' pockets, head down. It had turned into a bad day, or rather evening. She pushed out of her chair and grabbed her things so that she could meet him in the middle of the hallway.

"How'd it go?" she asked politely, even though she already knew the answer. He picked up his head and made eye contact with her, eyes looking sad and tired.

"It was fine." he shrugged, giving his usual non-committal answer as he did on the bad days. She gave him a sad smile and nodded, "Can we get out of here?" he asked, glancing around the hallway, almost like if he stayed any longer, he would start to break down. For some reason, it seemed worse than it usually was. Like it wasn't just a bad day, but something more.

"Of course." she gave him a warm smile before leading him out of the home.

He was quiet during the whole ride - not even commenting on the song they were listening to (they had made it to the early 90s). She glanced over at him every so often, trying to keep an eye on him. His head was against the window, like he was watching the scenery passing by, but his eyes were cloudy and his hands were balled into fists. He was slipping back into that dark place that he often went to whenever he was reminded of something he had tried so hard to forget. She needed to get him out of that place before he started to drown like he had in the Smithsonian.

"What are we doing here?" he asked as she parked her car in the lot in front of a diner. She didn't answer him at first, getting out of her car first. From the wall of windows, they could tell it wasn't busy - why would it be on a Wednesday night? She shrugged and looked over her car at him,

"Because I realized I haven't eaten anything all day." she played it off, not wanting him to think she was doing it for him - even though she was. He needed a pick-me-up and if that came in the form of grilled cheeses and tomato soup, then so be it.

Once they were in the booth, she ordered the same thing for both of them, getting a confused look from him that she questioned,

"What?" she asked, stabbing her straw into her soda.