Poem: "Against His Own Shield"
Apr. 7th, 2016 10:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithThis is the second freebie for the April 5, 2016 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from moongoddessgirl. It also fills the "Obstructive Bureaucrat" square in my 4-1-16 card for the Archetypal Characters Bingo card.
"Against His Own Shield"
The more Steve found out about
SHIELD, the less he liked it.
He found out that it had absorbed
the Strategic Scientific Reserve,
which he could remember as
the somewhat shady source
of Project: Rebirth.
Regrettably its scientific reputation
had fallen right into the latrine,
Steve discovered as he read
Dr. Foster's scathing critique.
He knew that there were problems --
he'd found the Phase II weapons
during the Chitauri incident, after all --
and it bothered him to see just
how deep the cracks went.
A lot of lies, a lot of murder.
Cloaks and daggers and
all that standard spy stuff.
Torture. Slavery.
It turned his stomach.
Everyone expected him to toe the line,
because he was Captain America,
but the thing was, everyone had
forgotten how many rules he'd
had to break to get there.
Steve liked rules, he really did,
but only if they were good rules,
fair rules. The Nazis had been
pretty big on rules too, only they
didn't care about the good part.
So he'd learned to be careful
about which rules he obeyed,
because not doing that led to
"just following orders."
Somehow it still surprised people
when he spoke out against
the things going wrong.
Honestly, it's like nobody even knew him.
You'd think they would have read
the books. There were enough of those.
Agent Coulson just smiled when
Steve stormed out of an office or
blew his stack over something
unearthed in the paperwork.
He had read the books, all right.
Agent Coulson always did his homework.
It was Agent Veeble who finally
put the last straw on the camel's back.
Steve had been digging into
the history of the Winter Soldier,
and not taking "That's classified"
for an answer anymore.
So when Agent Veeble refused
to release the paper-only copies
of certain things that had happened
to the Winter Soldier in SHIELD custody,
it was Captain America who leaned
over the desk and said clearly,
"Son, if you don't open that file cabinet,
I will open it myself, and there won't
be much cabinet left when I'm done."
"You can't do that," Agent Veeble whimpered.
"This is SHIELD property. You don't
have the proper clearance."
Captain America unlimbered his shield
and bounced it against the metal floor
with a deep, resonant bong. "This is
my clearance," he said. "Or did you
forget where the name came from?"
The bitterness of the contradiction
struck him all over again, how badly
the agency had turned out despite
the hope that Peggy Carter and
Howard Stark poured into it.
This was not what he sacrificed himself for.
That was when Assistant Director Hill
came in and assessed the situation.
"What's going on in here?" she asked.
"Oh, thank God you're here, ma'am!"
exclaimed Agent Veeble. "He's trying
to get into the secure files about
the Winter Soldier. Make him stop."
"I'm not here to make him stop,"
said Assistant Director Hill. "I'm
here to make sure that he doesn't
drop you down one of the engines."
Her fingers tapped at the keyboard,
and then she unlocked the cabinet.
"Or deliver a speech that melts
what little brain you have."
"I wouldn't drop him down an engine,"
said Captain America. "Those things
are fragile and really hard to fix."
Assistant Director Hill did not laugh,
but one corner of her mouth twitched.
"Good luck with the files," she said.
Even a cursory glance was enough
to tell Captain America that SHIELD
was even more of a wreck than he'd
thought, and that it was going to take
a lot of time to go through the mess
and figure out how to clean it up.
So he hefted one drawer under
his left arm and another under
his right arm. He might as well
go back to Avengers Tower where
he could do the research in comfort ...
and more safety than here.
"What's with Captain America using
his spear against his own shield?"
Agent May asked in a dry tone.
"It's not 'my' SHIELD,"
Captain America said,
"but it will be."
* * *
Notes:
The idiom 自相矛盾 (zì xiāng máo dùn), which literally means to use one’s spear against one’s shield, evolved from this story.
-- Chinese Idioms
Maria Hill: What does S.H.I.E.L.D. stand for, Agent Ward?
Grant Ward: Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.
Hill: And what does that mean to you?
Ward: It means someone really wanted our initials to spell out "shield."
-- Agents of SHIELD
The above conversation, while flippant, is in fact true based on another conversation in canon.
The Strategic Scientific Reserve was a forerunner of SHIELD, the two agencies spanning Captain America: The First Avenger and Captain America: The Winter Soldier among others.
"Just following orders" has appeared both as an entertainment trope and as the Nuremberg defense in history.
Captain America is famous for his hard-hitting speeches. Here's one about how America is nothing but what people make of it, one on tolerance vs. discrimination, and one about standing up for what's right.
Agent May has a dry wit.
moongoddessgirl. It also fills the "Obstructive Bureaucrat" square in my 4-1-16 card for the Archetypal Characters Bingo card. "Against His Own Shield"
The more Steve found out about
SHIELD, the less he liked it.
He found out that it had absorbed
the Strategic Scientific Reserve,
which he could remember as
the somewhat shady source
of Project: Rebirth.
Regrettably its scientific reputation
had fallen right into the latrine,
Steve discovered as he read
Dr. Foster's scathing critique.
He knew that there were problems --
he'd found the Phase II weapons
during the Chitauri incident, after all --
and it bothered him to see just
how deep the cracks went.
A lot of lies, a lot of murder.
Cloaks and daggers and
all that standard spy stuff.
Torture. Slavery.
It turned his stomach.
Everyone expected him to toe the line,
because he was Captain America,
but the thing was, everyone had
forgotten how many rules he'd
had to break to get there.
Steve liked rules, he really did,
but only if they were good rules,
fair rules. The Nazis had been
pretty big on rules too, only they
didn't care about the good part.
So he'd learned to be careful
about which rules he obeyed,
because not doing that led to
"just following orders."
Somehow it still surprised people
when he spoke out against
the things going wrong.
Honestly, it's like nobody even knew him.
You'd think they would have read
the books. There were enough of those.
Agent Coulson just smiled when
Steve stormed out of an office or
blew his stack over something
unearthed in the paperwork.
He had read the books, all right.
Agent Coulson always did his homework.
It was Agent Veeble who finally
put the last straw on the camel's back.
Steve had been digging into
the history of the Winter Soldier,
and not taking "That's classified"
for an answer anymore.
So when Agent Veeble refused
to release the paper-only copies
of certain things that had happened
to the Winter Soldier in SHIELD custody,
it was Captain America who leaned
over the desk and said clearly,
"Son, if you don't open that file cabinet,
I will open it myself, and there won't
be much cabinet left when I'm done."
"You can't do that," Agent Veeble whimpered.
"This is SHIELD property. You don't
have the proper clearance."
Captain America unlimbered his shield
and bounced it against the metal floor
with a deep, resonant bong. "This is
my clearance," he said. "Or did you
forget where the name came from?"
The bitterness of the contradiction
struck him all over again, how badly
the agency had turned out despite
the hope that Peggy Carter and
Howard Stark poured into it.
This was not what he sacrificed himself for.
That was when Assistant Director Hill
came in and assessed the situation.
"What's going on in here?" she asked.
"Oh, thank God you're here, ma'am!"
exclaimed Agent Veeble. "He's trying
to get into the secure files about
the Winter Soldier. Make him stop."
"I'm not here to make him stop,"
said Assistant Director Hill. "I'm
here to make sure that he doesn't
drop you down one of the engines."
Her fingers tapped at the keyboard,
and then she unlocked the cabinet.
"Or deliver a speech that melts
what little brain you have."
"I wouldn't drop him down an engine,"
said Captain America. "Those things
are fragile and really hard to fix."
Assistant Director Hill did not laugh,
but one corner of her mouth twitched.
"Good luck with the files," she said.
Even a cursory glance was enough
to tell Captain America that SHIELD
was even more of a wreck than he'd
thought, and that it was going to take
a lot of time to go through the mess
and figure out how to clean it up.
So he hefted one drawer under
his left arm and another under
his right arm. He might as well
go back to Avengers Tower where
he could do the research in comfort ...
and more safety than here.
"What's with Captain America using
his spear against his own shield?"
Agent May asked in a dry tone.
"It's not 'my' SHIELD,"
Captain America said,
"but it will be."
* * *
Notes:
The idiom 自相矛盾 (zì xiāng máo dùn), which literally means to use one’s spear against one’s shield, evolved from this story.
-- Chinese Idioms
Maria Hill: What does S.H.I.E.L.D. stand for, Agent Ward?
Grant Ward: Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.
Hill: And what does that mean to you?
Ward: It means someone really wanted our initials to spell out "shield."
-- Agents of SHIELD
The above conversation, while flippant, is in fact true based on another conversation in canon.
The Strategic Scientific Reserve was a forerunner of SHIELD, the two agencies spanning Captain America: The First Avenger and Captain America: The Winter Soldier among others.
"Just following orders" has appeared both as an entertainment trope and as the Nuremberg defense in history.
Captain America is famous for his hard-hitting speeches. Here's one about how America is nothing but what people make of it, one on tolerance vs. discrimination, and one about standing up for what's right.
Agent May has a dry wit.
in extremis
Date: 2018-01-11 04:42 am (UTC)Noble sentiments, ... BUT... the scenario below is not at all hypothetical. Rather, it is drawn directly from my lived experience, earlier in this decade, in this country.
I was once in the position of being that tree, which sought to take root along the bank, only to be told that if I did, they would dump poison in the water upstream of me, such that it would saturate my roots and kill me. I retracted those roots, and survived.
Later, as part of the same fluster cluck, I planted roots again, and this time, told them to BRING IT. They did. However, because of the technically illegal but morally right action I took, of choosing to respond to a request for contact by the person named in a No Contact Order levied against me by the court, in less than an hour, that person and I sorted out the misperceptions and misunderstandings behind a particular situation - and they subsequently went to bat for me, against the legal juggernaut. My having responded to that request for contact landed me in water that was not merely hot, but scalding -- my probation officer officially wrote a recommendation for a minimum of 90 days jail time. At the subsequent hearing to decide my fate, the person "on whose behalf" the state was taking what it felt to be appropriate action stood up in court and requested, of their own volition, that they and I be permitted to have contact via email, and was immediately told by the prosecuting attorney, "Unacceptable!"
I found - and still find - their response, UNACCEPTABLE. In order to avoid (further) jail time, where the combination of imposed diet and lack of medical care could have permanently RUINED my already compromised health, had I been forced to endure such conditions for even 30 days, let alone longer, I made sure I was never again caught being non-compliant. But my willingness to uphold law, based solely on a bully's say-so? GONE. DEAD. EXTINCT, from that appalling moment in a King County District Courtroom in November of 2013.
Re: in extremis
Date: 2018-01-11 05:04 am (UTC)Can't say as I blame them. Nobody wants to stay with someone who mistreats them.
Re: in extremis
Date: 2018-01-11 03:09 pm (UTC)Your situation seems like one that needs a mediator or someone with a clue in interpersonal skills, instead of the State and courts. :-( People get killed who had a No Contact Order against their soon to be murderer, and you are getting legal proceedings for the "protected person" contacting you and speaking on your behalf. We really need better options for this.
Re: in extremis
Date: 2018-01-11 06:32 pm (UTC)"Better options" for the situation I survived would start with the law not being so insanely tilted. It may be different in other states, but the laws on the books here say that I can be charged with a FELONY if I respond to contact initiated by the protected party. In other words, PP can phone, text, or email repeatedly, whenever they choose, but if I respond, in any way, *I* am the one at whom all the fecal matter is flung. FUCK that, and the horse it rode in on.
Re: in extremis
Date: 2018-01-12 03:05 am (UTC)Imagine the outrage if anyone did that to men.