#bucky's chocolate-potato cake is the one from that tiktok video of historical recipes

[violetfaust]

Here's my pitch for the post-credits scene in Dr. Strange: Multiverse of Madness.

Open on a large wall-mounted TV clicking on to some news station.

Pull back so we can see a white cat sitting on a wooden coffee table, batting at the TV remote: she's just turned it on.

Then we start a slow pan around the room: nice, not huge, lived in. A squishy sectional couch with a huge photograph behind it of a graffitied wall outside an NYC subway station. Video game controllers on the coffee table. A floor plant or two. Music playing in the background, turned down quite low; we can't make out all the words.

The room flows into a dining room: big MCM-style table with the CA shield at one end. It's upside down and a black-and-white cat is curled up in it, asleep. There's an MCM sideboard with a record player and some speakers on top; a large mason jar filled with wine corks. Open storage on both sides; one side has a collection of vinyl records, the other a stack of board games and video game cartridges.

There's a record on the player, and now we can hear it clearly: Etta James's Trust in Me (we can also hear indistinguishable voices in the background, some muted laughter).

We can get along, we can get along

Oh, if you trust in me

While there's a moon, a moon in the sky,

While there are birds, birds to fly

While there is you, you and I

I can be sure that I love you

Oh stand beside me, stand beside me all the while,

Come on Daddy, face the future,

Why don't you smile

Trust in me and I'll be worthy of you

Camera keeps panning, never stopping, into an open kitchen: black cabinets, white subway tile, wood counters and floating shelves. A magnetic knife rack with a HUGE number of knives. Two almost-empty glasses of red wine on the kitchen island.

Music fades out and we can hear the people talking more clearly; the camera never stops to focus on them. We just get bits of conversation. It's Sam and Bucky, washing dishes at a big old farm sink. One of them washes and the other dries.

"--birthday, and Sarah asked if you'd bring that chocolate cake--"

"Oh, a request? For my chocolate-potato cake?"

(muttering)

"My 'Depression nonsense' cake? That cake?"

"What, you gotta make me say it?"

"You know what? Yeah, I do. C'mon. 'Bucky, I love the chocolate-potato cake.'"

"Okay, fine. FINE. Bucky, I love--"

Camera is panning out of the kitchen, in a circle back to the living/dining room, so the voices fade and we hear the music again. Passes an exposed brick wall with a ton of pictures and artworks, gallery style: black-and-white and color photos of families, the boat, a black-and-white photo of lower Manhattan seen from Brooklyn about 70 years ago, the wartime pic of Bucky and Steve from the Smithsonian, the picture of Sam and Riley from TWS, a candid of a lot of people from Tony's Avengers party at the beginning of AOU, a laughing Natasha Romanoff batting at Redwing, a WWII-era "Captain America Wants You" poster.

And we've come full circle back to the TV. Which is playing "Breaking News" footage of lightning flashing in purple skies and half of Manhattan falling into that huge sinkhole.

Alpine meows. Cut.