damned_institute | Day 37: Men's Showers

I wouldn't really call this a locker room. More like a bathroom with lockers. The place was uncomfortably crowded, with almost every adult male patient being hustled into the showers at once, but Phoenix wasn't as annoyed by the claustrophobic, milling throng of bodies as he might have otherwise been. Every extra person was one more person who might end up standing between himself and Edgeworth.

He knew that the prosecutor would have a fit if he found out about this. He'd known since he'd tacked that first response up on the bulletin board. And in a way, he couldn't blame him. Phoenix knew that he jumped into things all-or-nothing more often than most people. At the same time, he had some kind of reality testing. He wasn't going to learn the basics of how to defend himself and suddenly decide that he was Rambo.

He found an unoccupied locker in the southwest corner and glanced around, trying to gauge how long he could possibly stall in a locker room, looking as if he was expecting something, before people started looking at him strangely. It would have been easier if he'd known something of the description of the man he was supposed to be meeting. As it was, all he had was handwriting and a military rank, neither of which guaranteed any particular appearance.

It's not as if there was a better way to plan this, though. "Yeah, meet me by the lockers. I'll be wearing gray and a smiley face, just like about a hundred other guys."

[for Hughes]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"That's..." Well, it wasn't impossible. Odd, but not impossible, certainly. "2008?"

Steve wasn't going to try to justify the time difference. That was much, much later than it should have been for the Avengers to get started. This conversation really was full of surprises, and not the sort that Steve expected from dealing with another dimension.

"2008," Tony confirmed, still sorting through his own surprise at the difference in timelines. Odd as it was, it lent a further note of truth to the situation, the way that something more predictable would not have. "When did we get started in your dimension? Just out of curiosity." It was code, of a sort, for the much harder to definitively answer question of just how different the two realities were.

[hahaha, oh god marvel telescoping timelines D:]

"The Avengers were founded in 1993," Steve replied, considering everything that had happened in what seemed like such a short time. "Though you built the original Iron Man suit a year or so before that..."

Steve wasn't sure how this Tony felt about people knowing he was Iron Man. For the longest time, Steve and the other Avengers hadn't even known that Tony Stark and Iron Man were the same person.

If the faint, pleased smirk that formed at its mention was taken as an indication, he didn't mind at all. He'd gone public, against advice and against what many might claim was common sense, he was hardly about to start complaining about being known now. "'93? Huh. I would've just been a kid..." Provided the two realities weren't so separate that there was a gap in ages as well, which he guessed wasn't an entirely safe assumption to make.

"Well, you weren't a kid..." Steve decided that he wasn't going to get into the more complicated, confusing dimensional and time traveling events that had taken place.

"How well did you pay attention to history when you were in school?" There had to be a point where the two of them diverged, and while it wasn't really important, Steve was curious about how the last century had gone in Tony's dimension. And of the fate of the Captain America in Tony's world, too.

"Depends on which parts," Tony replied, smiling a little wryly. After a brief pause he added, "Well enough, for the most part. It helps to be informed." He'd certainly not ignored modern history. It was relevant enough, and shaped enough of the laws and protocols governing what he did, and what his father had done, that it would have been hopelessly naive to have done so.

"The last century or so," Steve said. That was certainly the history he knew best, considering he'd been part of it himself. It was also probably a safe topic, something they could just discuss.

They could save further talk about the Avengers and other more current events for another time.

"Pretty well," Tony replied. "Some parts better than others, but..." He trailed off, shrugging to indicate the conclusion was logical enough in and of itself to be easily drawn. Major events were important, politically charged events more so. "What are you looking for? From the sound of things, the dates might not even match up..."

"Well, if they don't match up, it'll show that events diverged much earlier... and I'll admit, there is something specific I'd like to know, was there a Captain America in your dimension?" He couldn't help but be curious about it, that could be something else that was different, or it could be something that was similar.

Knowing how much of the truth had been obscured in Steve's own dimension regarding Captain America, he didn't think Tony would have many of the solid facts. Still, it was something he wanted to know.

The question gave Tony pause, and earned a sharply curious glance. It wasn't suspicion, simply the fact that from an external perspective, the choice of facts to seek seemed almost random. Almost being the operative word, and that alone was worthy of note. "Yeah, there was." Long before his time, perhaps, but legends tended to make the rounds for a considerable period of time.

Steve had expected the question to draw interest, it was very specific and probably unrelated from Tony's perspective. Still, it was an odd relief to know that there was a Captain America in Tony's dimension.

He noticed the staff was starting to usher the patients out, and turned off the water. "It looks like we'll have to finish this conversation later," Steve said as he was escorted away by the staff.

Day 37: Men's Showers

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