ten_fwd | (no subject)

There are a lot of people without uniforms walking around.

It's reassuring, in a way, because none of them are recognizable and most of them don't seem to know who Captain America is, male or female. So she and those of her own - or alternate - universes couldn't have been targeted specifically.

(probably)

And it's completely unreassuring since that, at least, would have indicated some sort of pattern, logic, or reason.

Steph has been spending a lot of time in the library where, shockingly enough, information seems to be split between large computer terminals and actual paper books. She is going to hold this over Stark forever, assuming she ever sees him again.

Captain Steph Rogers has learned, in a short amount of time:
-The Great War happened
-World War II happened
-There is no record of any sort of Captain America
-There is no record of the Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement & Logistics Division (though she was pretty sure there wouldn't be, no matter what)
-There is no record of the Chitauri
-There are a lot of records about other aliens

She's actually enjoying reading up on Vulcan history and the founding of the United Federation of Planets. It's making her feel a lot more confident and relaxed in general about finding herself aboard the Enterprise.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"It is. It's not..." Gaila frowns a little, swinging her chair this way and that as she thinks.

"It's not perfect. Neither are its members. But we try, and I think that mostly, we get it right. Or we learn.

And that is something worth protecting, and working for."

Then she sighs. "Once I catch up with over a century of computing theory."

The way Gaila talks about Starfleet is comforting, to say the least. Steph's shoulders come down a bit, and she hadn't even realized she'd had them tensed. She smiles at the other young woman and it's a sweeter thing, nodding with her.

"I think the same about the military," she admits, just a hint of hesitance. That's not a popular opinion in the twenty-first century and Gaila has already responded harshly to calling Starfleet military. "You join up and it's not perfect, but that's why you join up. And then you try."

She smiles and there's that look in her eye, the look of the True Believer, the spirit that can't be kept down, no matter how many knocks it takes. "Like you said, you get it right, or you learn. And you keep trying to get it right."

She knows that look; she wears it enough herself. That's not why she is frowning, even if slightly.

"You said you were part of...SHIELD? What do they do?"

Steph smiles, but some of that light dims, just a little. The army wasn't perfect but during the war, it was straightforward. There really was a Good side, a Bad side, and they were very nearly black and white. These days, SHIELD... it's not always so clear.

"It stands for Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division."

Because that totally answers Gaila's question, right?

"Basically it's in defense of the nation, but opponents tend to be... extremely classified."

"Oh, like spies?" Pause. "Well, I guess you can't answer that."

Steph laughs and nods, a little uncomfortable with the description, but her expression and fidgeting make it look more like shyness. "Here, I guess I can. There's a lot of agents who are covert, but I'm not usually one of them. That's the idea, though. Fights that can't be fought in front of a camera, basically."

Unless they're in the middle of New York, laying waste to skyscrapers from a hole in the sky.

Y'know.

"That's important, too," she says. It's sad, but true.

Then,

"SHIELD is much easier to remember."

Steph nods. She meant that a bit more literally than Gaila might understand: the fights she fought on camera were staged, political, posturing. The fights off-camera were the ones that mattered, the ones that made a real difference during war.

"Isn't it?" she agrees, laughing now, mood lightened. "It's a pretty terrible name, but I like the acronym."

It's kind of her thing, after all.