usavatar | I WAS MADE TO HIT IN AMERICAAAA

I WAS MADE TO HIT IN AMERICAAAA

He should know not to go out at night by himself. Not because he's in any danger - Captain America in New York City on a less-than-average day doesn't have much to worry about. But because, almost without exception, he gets lost. Steve tucks his hands into the pockets of his jeans and squints up at the buildings around him, ignoring the college student who staggers by, stops to stare at him, and bursts out laughing before moving on.

He's used to that, too, by now. Apparently dressing conservatively these days isn't a reflection of care for the resources of the country, or a side-effect of living life as a soldier for two years - it's just "dorky." At least he doesn't feel like someone's taped a sign to his back, not since he asked Darcy - Agent Lewis - why he kept getting that reaction.

Of course the fact that she had to explain what 'Because you're a dork' meant didn't really help his... street cred. He chuckles to himself, only a little ironic, at managing to use both terms in one train of thought.

A few streets later he's getting very confused. Usually he's able to find at least one familiar street or landmark to point him in the general right direction, at least until he finds a cab to get him the rest of the way back to the mansion. He's done this enough in the months he's been here that his assigned SHIELD shadows don't pop a vein unless he's not back by morning - in this case, though, that's probably working against him.

Finally Steve sighs and digs into his pocket to pull out his cellular phone. He looks at it for a moment, smiling to himself and wondering what Howard would make of all this. Tiny phones with tinier batteries and communicators and jets that don't need runways to take off.

Well, for all Steve knows, Howard invented most of it. He still hasn't been able to bring himself to look at history texts to see how his friends lived out their lives. There's something too much like admitting he's never going to see them again in doing that.

He flips the phone open gingerly, poking the tiny buttons with his pinky because he's not sure how else to manage the thing, and dials in what he's fairly sure is Darcy's number. Agent Lewis's number. He could try calling someone else, but she's friendly, in her own way. She doesn't treat him like a loaded gun waiting to be pointed at the next Big Bad Guy.

Steve lifts the phone to his ear with a frown. "Uh. Hello?"

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The Strategic Scientific Reserve doesn't sound terribly memorable, but she's probably just forgotten it, if she read it in passing. It's the latter part of his explanation that really pings her, combined with his apparent extra strength.

"Super soldier program? Does that mean you're a super soldier?" Her tone is calm, quiet, and heavy. Super soldier implies exactly what it sounds like: a soldier, but better. Different from the rest, but almost the same. It's a bit familiar. The circumstances were clearly not alike, but it strikes close to home.

"I'm afraid I haven't heard of him either," she confesses of Tony Stark, although she's wondering if it's one of the things she should know. If Stark Industries is a prominent company, most people would have probably heard of it.

"That's what they tell me," he says, matching her voice. After a second he says, "I never wanted to fight."

It's almost defensive, like he has to explain why he went and did it, has to explain that what Erskine wanted wasn't just someone better equipped to kill. "I wanted to stop people from hurting each other. That's why Erskine picked me. That's what he said. That's why he picked me for the program, I mean."

He has to remember she has no idea about him, his history. He's stumbling a bit over the sharing part, when he's assumed for so long that most people know at least a little. "He was the one in charge - anyway, it wasn't meant to hurt anyone. It was to keep more lives from being lost."

"Did it save lives?" she asks, unable to stop herself. Saving others--it'd always been a priority of hers. But then she backpedals, worried she's gone too far. "You don't have to answer, I'm sorry."

Quorra draws in a breath, thinking over her words carefully. She recognizes the sound of his tone, knows what it means. "Sometimes we do things we don't want to out of need," she starts, tentatively. She can tell Steve is a good person, and she doesn't like hearing him this way. "For the sake of others. To stop them from hurting each other. I don't think there's anything wrong with that."

"I did," he says, and it's still quiet, but there's a note of pride in it. "He did. He told me I was a good man, but."

The truth is, he's always tried to be the man that Erskine saw. The truth is, he's always thought Erskine was the better man, for everything that happened to him and everything he still believed that people could be. Steve smiles up at the neon haze overhead, outlining the buildings. "I don't think there's anything wrong with it either."

"I'm sure he was right," she says gently but also a bit sternly. "It saved people. From the sound of it, that means you've saved people, too. It needed both of you."

She idly traces the edge of the pillow. "Were there others? Like you?"

He laughs, thinking for a second there she sounded a lot like Peggy. "There weren't. Well, not like me. But I wasn't by myself, there's no way I could have done everything alone."

He doesn't think about the gunman in the procedure room, doesn't think about Erskine on the floor tapping his finger against Steve's chest, one last reminder. Instead he focuses on the Commandos, Peggy and Phillips and Howard. "I was part of a team. Some of the best men and women I've ever known."

"So you're the only one," she says, kind of softly and partially sounding like some sort of confirmation. There might not have been any other super soldiers, but that didn't make being alone any better. "I mean, not to disregard your team."

But she finds herself smiling when he brings up this team. "Would you say they were friends as well as teammates?"

"...Yeah. I am." And he really is, with Schmidt gone. Not that the man was ever what Erskine wanted his project to be, not that Steve ever saw himself as being the same kind of person. Schmidt was the other side of his coin, in a way. He always thought when Schmidt was gone, when the war was over, Captain America wouldn't be needed any more.

And it was true, in a way. He vanished along with Johann Schmidt and the war ended and the world went on. He wonders if he would have died eventually, down there under the ice. If maybe -

Steve shakes his head and clears his throat and does not put his fist two inches deep into the nearest building because that would be both property damage and immature. He gathers himself and tries to remember what Quorra was asking. "Wh- Oh. ...Yeah, yeah, they definitely were."

"That's good. To have them as friends," she says. She remembers that they're probably gone--if he was in stasis. Doubling being alone, beyond just the super soldier.

Quorra goes quiet, for a good long moment. She can say a little bit, can't she? As long as she avoids the details...

"I'm..." she starts, nails digging into the pillow, "I'm something of an only one, too."

He waits, hearing the hesitance and knowing what she's saying can't be easy. Before this- before being woken up in the modern world- he never thought of himself as being alone. Even when the project got scrapped and the SSR was re-tasked, they were still together, still part of a common goal.

Well, he did kind of have to wedge his way in, but still. They were of one mind and one purpose, which meant more than having extra enhanced humans around.

And that's about when he puts his finger on it. The reason he has so much trouble with SHIELD sometimes, with the other Avengers - they were gathered for a purpose, the biggest sticks to hit the biggest bad guys, and that's the difference. They weren't just people working together - they were the best, they knew it, they'd always been told it. They could stand alone as easily as together, and they had. They were extra enhanced humans to have around just in case things got nasty.

A weak man knows the value of strength, Erskine had said. Steve shakes his head. He's getting dangerously close to a kind of hubris, but he does have to wonder if the others, with the exception of maybe Dr. Banner, had ever had helplessness and defiance of it engrained as deeply as he had himself.

"It's all right," he says, quiet and solid and gentle. "Take your time."

"It's not the same," Quorra spits out quickly. "It's very different."

Maybe she's making false comparisons. She doesn't want this to be about her. She was trying to be some sort of comfort to him, but maybe, despite a sense of understanding, they were still worlds apart.

"And it's not like I'm... alone-alone. I have Sam." And she had Flynn. And maybe one day, she and Castor could get to be friends again--real friends and not this awkward-but-getting-there set up. Alan, Lora, they were kind--she had people.

But they weren't ISOs. And none of them could really understand what it was like to be the only one left. How lonely it got sometimes. She was grateful for them in her life, but the Purge... it was impossible for her to forget.

"I would think so," he says, and it's amused but not mocking or dismissive. After a second he says, "I'm glad. That you have someone like that."

He's trying to think who he has, and... Well, there's Darcy. Natasha, kind of, and Clint. But no one he'd profess to have the kind of connection to that Quorra has with this Sam or hers. He smiles, the expression hooded and a little tired. "How did you meet him? Did I ask that already?"

"You didn't ask," she replies. "But it's... complicated. Very complicated."

More complicated than she's sure she can explain. It's the sort of story she can't just jump to the middle with. Sam, the Son of Flynn. It requires everything.

"You asked if I was an alien. I'm not." She pauses. "But... there isn't anyone else like me, either."

Steve waits, realizes his silence might make her nervous, and says, "It's all right," again. He leans against he building he felt like punching, staring at nothing and imagining what she could be. There's really nothing to rule out any more, he's found. She'll probably still surprise him regardless.

"I'm listening." It's not said as a prompt to get her to talk, just a reassurance. A promise. I'm here, even if he's not sitting next to her.

"I'm different," she starts, carefully. "Special. Like you are."

She's too cautious for details right now. She trusts Steve, sure, but she spent all those cycles keeping who she was a secret. It's hard to reveal--it even was with Sam, who she trusted and believed in without a doubt. For now, her answers stay a bit cryptic.

"And I'm the only one left."

"...Can I ask what happened?" There's only so many things that could have - whatever she might be. There's only so many ways you can lose everyone like you or everyone you're close to, and none of them could be remotely considered pleasant. "You don't have to talk about it. If it helps you, if you want to, then..."

He hesitates a moment more. "What... What kind of special?"

She falls quiet, taking in silent but deep breaths. She's already said this much. It can't hurt to add more.

"Genocide." Shortly said. Heavy. Every implication that comes with the word rests in her tone.

What kind of special? How to explain what it means to be an ISO? It was all in her coding, that specialness. Did he even know what a computer program was? Was there some sort of good comparison? "I suppose you could say it's.. like DNA," she tries. "Not exactly, but... but it's inherent. Inside me."

He feels like he should know what that means. The way she says it, he feels he really should know what that means. Sufficed to say she's alone, and something horrible happened to make it that way.

He's too quiet, he realizes, and finally says, "Natural, or was it something that... Was it something that changed you?"

She's read about them--other genocides. Flynn advised against it, but she couldn't help it. Morbid curiosity, a need to know. It's a word with many connotations. But she's unsure what to make of Steve's silence, there's something different about it, before latching on to his question.

"Natural, technically. Almost spontaneous." A pause. "But an unexpected existence."

She's losing him. He's not stupid, but his smarts are usually tactical, physical - not so much mechanical. "I'm sorry. I don't understand."

Steve feels bad making her explain, but he wants to understand, and if she didn't want him to, she wouldn't be sharing.

She's not surprised to hear his confusion. But to explain the ISOs... she's still unsure. Maybe she can try without mentioning any direct terms, or even mentioning the brilliance of her coding and what it meant for the world.

"I'm not human," she admits. She can do that much--he's already revealed the existence of aliens to her. "My existence was a spontaneous evolution."

That sounds like the mutants he's been reading about in recent reports. If she's changing the way they have, alone, it might make her think...

But then there's that word, the one she gave so much weight that he doesn't know. He doesn't want to go saying things like that without all the facts, saying that she might not be the only one out there. "Okay," is all he says, hoping there's something more he can latch on to, to wrap his head around whatever it is she's saying.

Quorra sighs, but not with exasperation. She can tell it's not making much sense, but it's not any fault of his. "I'm sorry, I'm not explaining it very well. It's... not something I should talk entirely freely about."

At the very least, in her mind, some sort of explanation for the confusion is called for.

"DNA is the User--human equivalent, more or less. Mine is... special." A pause as she thinks. "Where I'm from, I, and the others like me, were different from everyone already in existence. A cut above the rest, you could say." Flynn had said that once. Maybe it would make sense to Steve.

"I understand." There's plenty of things he can't speak freely about. He can hardly begrudge her some secrets. He nods as she explains, starting to get a handle on things - it's more or less what he thought she meant, but it's always nice to be sure.

He's silent for a breath before he decides he might as well ask. "Quorra? Why do you keep calling humans Users? Have we- is it our fault, that you're by yourself?"

"What? No, no at all," she says, rushing to defend. She of all people has enormous faith in Users. "It's how I've always known them. It was a User who saved me from..." Her voice trails off. You can do this, Quorra. "It's thanks to a User that I'm still alive."

For a few seconds, she debates asking, before just blurting it out. "Do you know what computer programs are?"

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