He even spent a European semester abroad in Svitz, where the legal age for talking about clouds was eighteen.
He spent many long nights, more than he should have, staying up till dawn discussing clouds, thrilled at the taboo of it. It was only when he returned to the United States that he had some regret, that he didn’t truly understand Svitz as a country or a culture, and had missed his chance to really experience it,
because he had wasted his time reveling in a place where he could legally talk about clouds.
Darcy Lewis is good at her job but bad at time travel
The Howling Commandos were huddled outside Colonel Phillips’ mud-spattered tent, droppin’ eaves like it was going out of style. Oh, they posed all nonchalant-like around the side, pretending they wouldn’t all rather be inside their barracks tent, gathered ‘round a hot stove than sat in the chill drizzle, listening to their CO get reamed a new one.
Their damp tableau was broken up by one Darcy Lewis, the strangest of all SSR’s administrative field staff, which was saying somethin’. She tromped past them in her silt-brown boots and slicker. Her thick glasses were speckled with rain, and she looked at least as miserable to be in the wet as they were. She stopped anyway.
“What’s kickin’, fellas?” She always had some wacky greeting; it was one of her many quirks. Another was never calling Cap by his name if she could avoid it. “Where’s Ol’ Glory?”
“The Colonel’s bustin’ his chops,” Jones offered before any of his compatriots could say something cruder. They never forgot they were talking to a woman, not out here, but they did sometimes forget that they’d been taught the manners to talk to a woman properly.
“What’d he do this time?”
Sargent Barnes didn’t like the cheerful, sure way Lewis asked it. “Maybe it was one of us that did somethin’.”
She waved a hand. “Nah. Dude’s been jumping out of planes without a parachute for-” She visibly stopped herself from talking, and glanced around at the Commandos. “'Sides,” she continued, tugging her hand-knit cap down over her ears, “I heard Phillips shout 'reckless’ at least twice earlier, when I walked past and stopped to listen.”
The Howlies started to laugh, but the Colonel’s steady lecture tone rose sharply. Captain Rogers’ voice- stubbornness in every syllable- was trying to placate.
Ms. Lewis smirked a bit, her lips contraband red. “I guess that’s my cue to go rescue ya boi.” She stumped around the tent corner before any of the men could ask what she meant.
A moment later, the men heard Phillips’ raspy, permanently-exasperated voice say, “Not now, Ms. Lewis.”
“Sorry, sir, but I was told this couldn’t wait.”
The Commandos huddled closer to the tent wall, careful not to touch it and give themselves away.
Rogers’ voice broke in, “Is that the intel on Hydra’s munitions supply chain?” He sounded, to the Howlies’ experienced ears, both eager for the lead, and the distraction.
“Uh, no. Sorry, Cap. I mean- Captain. That’s not in my wheelhouse.” Barnes and Dugan exchanged glances; what the hell did Hydra intel have to do with boats?
“What am I looking at?” Colonel Phillips prompted.
“Well, sir, those are the aerial photographs we took from Stark’s plane.”
“You mean the plane that nearly got shot down last week, despite Stark swearing up and down that his plane would be undetectable to the naked eye? The plane that had to set down two miles away from the landing strip, and I had to commandeer a tractor to tow it back to base? The plane that Stark promised would be up and operational within two days, and it has been a whole damn week?”
“Yes, sir, that plane.”
Morita covered his snicker, but only just. Lewis had perfected that innocent, too-dumb-to-live tone that all military personnel tried to emulate.
“These photographs appear to be of some sort of town, Lewis.”
“Yes, sir. They show the town of Svitz. It was overrun by Hydra five weeks ago, and razed to the ground.” The men tensed. An entire town destroyed by Hydra? It wasn’t the first, but they hadn’t heard anything about Svitz, and they’d made it their business to know everything Hydra was doing.
“And these photos are from last week?”
“Yes, sir,” Ms. Lewis said. Her voice hedged into the careful neutrality of SSR agents, “The town appears to be back.”
“Back?” Rogers’ incredulity was plain as the mustache on Dugan’s face. “From where?”
“Yes, back, Captain. We don’t know how- or from where, as you put it. Agent Carter is anxious to get a team out there and see if we can’t figure it out.”
“And I imagine,” the Colonel drawled, “Agent Carter wants to use the commando unit to babysit the boffins?”
“The boffins, sir?”
“The eggheads.”
“Oh. The science division. Yes, sir. As well as Agent Carter and myself.”
Steve’s voice choked out, “You?”
“Yes, Captain Rogers, me,” Ms. Lewis’ voice was chilly. “See, this is my wheelhouse.”
She had roundly dismissed Rogers in two seconds flat. Barnes was impressed; she must have learned that skill from Carter.
She continued as though she’d never been interrupted, “Sir, if this anomaly is what I think it is, we only have a limited time to reach Svitz before it reverts. I’ve brought the documentation from Agent Carter. It’s all in order.”
Colonel Phillips’ tone couldn’t get much drier, “I’ll bet it is.”
Barnes could hear papers being shuffled, and the distinctive scratch of Phillips’ pen on army paper.
“Alright, Lewis,” the Colonel said, all business. “You and the commandos under Captain Rogers will rendezvous with Agent Carter and your science squad, and investigate Svitz. Captain, you’ve got one hour to deploy. I want to know what the hell is going on with that town.”
“Yes, sir,” Rogers barked. A moment later, his boots retreated.
“Y'know, Colonel,” Ms. Lewis said, her voice projecting clear to the men on the other side of the canvas, “if I were going to be deploying in less than an hour, I’d get off my patootie and jump into some dry clothes while I had the chance.”
She was about as subtle as a brick to the face, and the Howling Commandos didn’t need to be told twice.
As they began to trail towards their bunks, and the all-too brief pleasure of getting into fresh, dry clothes, Barnes’ ears caught one last long-suffering line from the good ol’ Colonel:
“Get the hell out of my office, Lewis.”
The term “in (my) wheelhouse” to mean stuff you’re good at wasn’t used until the 50s. http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2013/09/09/in-ones-wheelhouse-from-boats-to-baseball-to/
Svitz is a “European” state (which I modified) from Welcome to Night Vale.
Cecil’s been putting it off for weeks but they leave for their fortnight in Svitz tomorrow and he needs something he can wear when they visit the lake. Cecil loves wild swimming and they chose that specific guesthouse up on the hill with the winding path down to the shore for this reason.
Carlos’ top surgery scars have long faded to pale lines, barely visible in winter, but easily recognised by those who know them intimately (Carlos, Cecil, Earl…) at the end of the summer months when –during his industrious spurts of lawn-mowing and gutter-clearing– weekend afternoon sunshine has baked his chest the colour of untanned calf leather.
Carlos is at ease in swim shorts and even owns a pair of blue Speedos he bought online along with the packer he’s barely used, one lonely evening in the Desert Otherworld when Doug and Alisha had been talking of digging a swimming pool and Carlos’ mind had drifted to to the times he and Cecil would share when he eventually found a way for Cecil to visit.
For Cecil, however, dysphoria is still ever-present. His old bathing suit rotted away centuries ago, having languished in the bottom of his underwear drawer since he graduated high school and the awkward horror of compulsory swimming lessons ceased. Yes, he could just go with the shorts-and-T-shirt combo he’d always sported at Earl’s annual 19th birthday pool parties, but he craves something he can move in freely in the water, without reducing him to a sobbing self-conscious wreck as soon as he puts it on. Cecil doesn’t believe such a bathing suit exists.
“C'mon Cece,“ Carlos’ voice snaps him out of his despairing reverie and he looks up to see the scientist shrugging on his lab coat, keys in hand. “We’re gonna find something at least OK. It may not be perfect, but I’ll be with you and we’ll get through any horrible gender feels together, so that when you swim in that lake all that will matter is the cool water against your skin and the sun on your face. It’ll be really neat, I promise.”
So Cecil pulls himself up from the sofa, takes Carlos’ outstretched hand, and they step out into the spring sunshine together toward the Mall in search of –if not the perfect– at least an OK bathing suit.
Now, back to our hazy memories of Svitz, Franchia, Luftnarp, and Nulogorsk: the locations of our Top 10 Europe headcanons.
38) Guglielmo Marconi was Cecil’s traveling partner in Svitz. Cecil’s hazy and disjointed memories of this whole affair are due to his mind constantly deleting information relating to his true age and nonsensical timeline.
43) Cecil found nothing alarming when Carlos told him that the countries he mentioned in “A Memory of Europe” don’t exist and never existed. Traveling to other dimensions or alternative timelines while trying to leave Night Vale is pretty common.
44) English is the language of weirdness in Nulogorsk. For instance, the second head that a sentient meteor gave to that Nulogorsk High wrestling champion? It only speaks English.
49) Svitz was Oz, under a different name. No one knew about it in the next country Cecil went to because The Wizard of Oz hadn’t been written by then (one of the people he spoke to in the other country happened to be a tourist—named L. Frank Baum). And those flowers that Cecil mentioned? Blue variants on the poppies.
67) Night Vale chanting at World War II didn’t cause the US to win, it caused the war to escalate and go on for decades and bring on global destruction by 1983.
68) Cecil had brown hair until he visited Franchia and the fear of the monster he may or may not have imagined turned it white/blonde colour.
69) The Man in the Tan Jacket is from Nulogorsk, and is the one to undo the destruction of the world - however, this manipulation of the timeline undid his own existence, which is why nobody can remember him.
75) Nulogorsk is stuck in a time loop (a la Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children) which repeats the day the town was destroyed up until a few seconds before the explosion. A few Nulogorskers have left the loop by escaping town before the explosion hit, and altering the timeline.
82) Franchia, one of the countries Cecil visited, used to be full of people. Then Strex came, and left it a hollow shell when they refused to give in, leaving only the knotted arches as a sign of human presence.
92) The Man in the Tan Jacket used to be the Mayor of Nulogorsk. He had no trouble communicating with the Apache Tracker because Russian is his first language.
Guglielmo Marconi was Cecil’s traveling partner in Svitz. Cecil’s hazy and disjointed memories of this whole affair are due to his mind constantly deleting information relating to his true age and nonsensical timeline.
Cecil found nothing alarming when Carlos told him that the countries he mentioned in “A Memory of Europe” don’t exist and never existed. Traveling to other dimensions or alternative timelines while trying to leave Night Vale is pretty common.
Svitz was Oz, under a different name. No one knew about it in the next country Cecil went to because The Wizard of Oz hadn’t been written by then (one of the people he spoke to in the other country happened to be a tourist—named L. Frank Baum).
And those flowers that Cecil mentioned? Blue variants on the poppies.
