June-July Storm and Calibrations - OTA

[doubled_speed]

WHO: Tommy Sheperd, OTA
WHERE: Around Temba, Calibrations Waiting Room, Tommy’s Calibration Room
WHAT: The lead up to and time around Calibrations
WHEN: June 2nd to July 10th
WARNINGS: CW: Tommy’s Calibrations room potentially contains depictions of child abuse and neglect, deprivation of food to a minor, bullying, and possible references toward unintentional property destruction.. It depends on what you touch (each will have warnings in strike-through attached). One happier memory does occur, though.


Helping Hand (Around Temba - June 2nd, the 36 Hours - OTA)

The message comes and a few things happen. First, Tommy freezes. The storm had been bad the last time. The lack of powers, the way he fractured his ankle, the way he’d seen people he’d lost, the way he’d wanted to hide and never come back. The idea of it happening again scared him more than anything. Add in his new issues with lightning and it got more complicated, not less. Of course while he freezes forever, it’s actually only a minute, and then he’s moving.

While he hasn’t been to his home since things went wrong, he moves immediately there and starts packing a box with all of his things. And after a moment of thought, his brother’s things, and Teddy’s for good measure. Some clothes for them all, a few personal touches to feel comfortable. The painting Vision made for him happened to go into a box too. And once that is all left off in the mouth of the tunnel, he’s back in the city.

He stops at the Greenhouse and spends time harvesting every last thing that’s ripe that he can get his hands on. They’ll need food if they’re going to be there for a while. Then it’s off to the ships. Grabbing anything loose and useful on the ship is the goal to get things back. He then moves around the city, racing up to anyone he sees and stopping to ask an important question.

“Is there anything I can do to help you? Anything you need carried? Hell, I’ll carry you.”

Safety matters, and he’s a hero. It’s going to happen.


Calibrations Waiting Room

Here

Calibrations [CW: Tommy’s Calibrations room potentially contains depictions of child abuse and neglect, deprivation of food to a minor, bullying, and possible references toward unintentional property destruction. It depends on what you touch (each will have warnings in strike-through attached). One happier memory included.]

The room is different than the waking hours, but not much. It’s not actually emptier but it somehow manages to feel it, in an abandoned sort of way. Instead of a queen-sized bed, there’s a twin mattress on the floor, next to which there sits a half-eaten package of off-brand poptarts cw: neglect and deprivation of food. The mattress itself is resting under a window so dirty and dusty that it’s almost impossible to see out through it. Instead of the drawers there’s just a closet, open and mostly bare save for a pillow in the corner. And across from the pillow a beat-up bookbag cw: bullying. Hidden up on the shelf in the closet is a dusty high school yearbook cw: explosions, property destruction, for a school in New Jersey, Go Pumas! The last object of any real note in the room is a discarded belt cw: child abuse. Okay, no, there’s also what looks like a picture pinned to a wall, seemly drawn by a child. It’s on that level at least, it’s made of crayon, and depicts people in very colorful costumes, with something scrawled under it. Welcome to the Young Avengers it reads.

In the middle of it all, metaphorically, is Tommy, looking around the room in disgust.

Comments

[brooklyn_boy]

Steve knows as soon as he walks into this room that something sorrowful lurks behind the items. The walls and the dust speak of neglect or, at the very least, avoidance. This looks as though it is a room barely entered by anyone who has a respect for it. And that only seems to be underlined by Tommy sat straight in the middle, looking around him as though he'd like to burn the whole place down.

"Hey, Tommy." Steve walks closer but gives the representation of the boy space. "Nice...uh....Nice place."

[doubled_speed]

"It's a fucking shithole and you know it," Tommy counters, his voice sharp as he stirs enough to look up at Steve and process just who it is.

"Come on, what you know of me already, this that surprising, Cap Spangles?"

[brooklyn_boy]

No, it wasn't. But that seemed like rubbing salt into a cut to say so. Instead Steve just shrugged and walked over toward the poptarts. He actually really liked these. They had a special 'Captain American' one with apple pie filling and patriotic icing. He wasn't a huge fan of that specific one, but coming back to life had apparently entitled him to free boxes of them every month.

Steve reaches out for it, wanting to see the flavor.

"At least you have some good snacks, right?"

cw: Child abuse and neglect

[doubled_speed]

Cut? This was so much more than that. This was an open wound plunged right through his chest. This would be rubbing salt into THAT. Handfuls of it.

"Careful," Tommy says, frowning. This... is not going to be good. But he doesn't know if he can stop the other man.


They aren't in the room. They're in terrible kitchen, a lot of the pantry doors looking like they're falling off or otherwise dirty. And there's a young kid there, black hair and Tommy's green eyes,

Also in the room is a woman, about Wanda's age. She doesn't look a lot like Tommy at all, except maybe something about her cheeks. She's making a pot of macaroni and cheese.

And there's Tommy as well, Tommy from now. Watching and glaring openly at the woman. But he's silent. He's seen this before. Lived it too. He watches the woman drain the noodles, mix in the butter and the milk and the cheese powder. The boy watches attentively as it all goes into a single large bowl. And the woman plops a spoon into it and walks out of the kitchen.

"What about me?" the boy, he can't be more than six, asks. His face is sad and his stomach absolutely makes an unhappy noise.

"What about you?" Mary asks, voice sharp as she looks back at him.

"What do I get for lunch?"

The woman narrows her eyes at that. "Who said you get lunch? you're little, you don't need lunch."

"But at school," young Tommy protests, and he can't be in more than kindergarten, "they give us lunch every day. And snacks."

Mary just scoffs and heads out toward the dingy living room.

"When you work and bring money in, you can have lunch."

The kid gets up and moves toward the fridge. And even as he moves to open the fridge there's a shout from the other room.

"You touch a damn thing without permission and I'll tell Frank!"

The boy cowers at that statement and slinks away toward an open door. Through the open door is clearly the same room that was Tommy's mental room, though it's a bit nicer in tha the things in it are not as worn down by another decade of use with no replacement. There's even a sheet on the bed, how nice. The only new thing in the room is a colorful backpack, too big for a boy his age. Far too big. It's the same one in the closet in Tommy's mind room, therefore probably having gone through his whole school career with him.

And the little boy opens the bag fetching out off-brand packages of poptarts. Clearly ones he got from school. The child is very careful as he opens a package and breaks one in half. And... then breaks it in half again sadly before sitting down in his closet to eat. Current Tommy, who had followed the boy, watches himself but younger hide in a closet and eat the poptart-piece, off brand of course, one small bite at a time, like he's savoring it.

With that the memory fades. Leaving them back in the room. Leaving Tommy standing there, glaring at the poptarts in Steve's hand.

[brooklyn_boy]

The memory that Steve sees is one that cuts him to the core. He doesn't really know who the woman is to Tommy, but it doesn't matter. Whoever she is and whoever Frank is, it is clear that they are abusive and starving this boy intentionally. The deliberate cruelness of it is crushing. To make the food as the other watches and to then laugh at his request to have some? He wants to look away but doesn't. Tommy had to live through it. Steve can do him the dignity of watching it without censor.

By the time the scene moves to the room and past-Tommy is nursing his piece of pop tart, Steve is furious at people who are likely either long gone or too far away for him to do anything about. You see, Steve knows what hunger feels like. He spent so much of his childhood hungry and miserable but that hunger was never done out of abuse. His mother and Bucky would eat half portions at every meal to make sure he had something on his plate. It was just that the 'something' was usually a thin soup and stale bread.

As the memory fades, Steve turns to Tommy, eyes soft with empathy. "How long were you with them for?" He hands over the pop tarts so Tommy can do what he wants with them. "Foster parents?"

[doubled_speed]

How long was he with them for? Tommy tries not to laugh. And he does, when Steve calls them his foster parents.

"Until I was sixteen and I ended up in juvie. And... since the day I was born. Steve, that was Mary Shepherd. My birth mother."

This was what was done to him by his PARENTS.

"I still don't know which was worse. Mary, or Frank."

[brooklyn_boy]

Birth mother? Steve is plainly shocked and unable to hide any piece of that reaction. How could a birth mother treat their own child like that? How could someone be so cruel?

"I'm sorry, Tommy," he says sincerely. "I am really sorry that you had to deal with that. I know what hunger is like and no child should be forced to face that by their own parents."

He shakes his head in abject dismay. As he does so, he looks around the room for more potential hot spots and lands on the belt. The belt. He rips his gaze away, already feeling the nauseating sensation that comes with your stomach dropping.

"Frank was your father?"

[doubled_speed]

Yeah. The belt. Perhaps the hottest spot in the room. Tommy doesn't know it, but he suspects. And if anyone could take it... it would probably be Cap.

"Yeah. Frank was my birth father. They aren't where my soul comes from, though. I learned that after. After... a lot of things. But they didn't want me. I was a Mistake. I always knew it."

[brooklyn_boy]

"You weren't a mistake," Steve says seriously, head flipping to look Tommy in the eye. "No one is a mistake and don't let those people convince you otherwise. They don't deserve to have that sort of control over you."

Steve's gaze turned back toward the belt and he could almost feel a draw toward it. A desire to know and to be there for Tommy warring against his desire to let one's secrets remain where they were. His throat clicked as he swallowed and kept looking at the belt like a snake that might lunge forward.

"I'm sorry that you had that sort of life, Tommy. Really. I can...only imagine the cruelty you have faced. You didn't deserve that."

[doubled_speed]

See, that's the thing. You never knew for certain that someone didn't deserve it. What, he was supposed to buy it wasn't his fault because he was a kid?

"Seems like in this place, you can see it too. But I'm a mistake. They didn't want me. And they got me because, you know, our world, or Billy or Wanda's magic insisted we had to exist. So bam. Free kid no one wants."

Tommy sees the eyes go back to the belt and shudders.

"School provided. I learned to go in early enough, after kindergarten, to make sure I got breakfasts. All students got free breakfasts if they were there early enough. And I took the paperwork the teachers gave us for free school lunches and filled it out."

Had to forge it all.