[Log] November Catch-all

[worthallthis]

Who: Bucky Barnes AKA Winter and OPEN
When: All of November
Where: Various, see prompts
Summary: Working, training, and having a breakdown in Dogtown
Warnings: Nothing so far, just the usual internalized depersonalization



I. Suspicion in Early Days - ADI Headquarters

After sleeping surprisingly well for most of a day on the first of the month, Winter spends the next several days of his patrols in the ADI buildings and apartments walking more carefully than usual, with his hand closer to his gun, half-expecting a new nightmare around the next corner. Did they really wake? How would he know?

Even afterwards, he ducks his head at the sight of many of the ADI employees-- more than usual, even. He shot some of them, in the dream. Without hesitation. Did they remember? Did they care? Did they fear him now? (They should. He is dangerous, clearly.)

Catch him sitting as far from everyone else as possible at lunch with his tray, or walking steadily through the halls looking for potential trouble, or having an extra cup of coffee after a bad night.


II. Teacher - ADI training room

Every day after his shift patrolling the ADI buildings or part of the city, Winter is in the training room in the basement levels of ADI, either working through a routine himself, or available to anyone who comes in and wants instruction. He has some regular students, at this point; he also has some people he's invited to come and learn. He hopes they come.

When they've finished a session and are just hitting the point of being too tired to continue without making more mistakes, Winter says, "Walk around the room. Cool off. Then I will walk you home."


III. Cloudy Day Blues - Dogtown

After the whole thing with the pigs, Winter has kept an eye on Dogtown. On days he isn't working, and sometimes in the mornings on days he does when he can't sleep and needs to walk, he circles the district. Dips into the streets to prowl and look for signs of trouble. When he's told of the monitoring at the park, he visits there, too.

Clouds don't make him run, though they do make him start to back away slowly. He feels the building pressure, the building dread, and remains steady. He lives with fear every day, he's learned how not to run away from it. It's when the certainty hits him that he's just going to kill everyone he ever cared about-- it only took the slightest provocation to make him shoot his fellow employees in that nightmare, didn't it? he shot Steve and punched him six times in the face, didn't he? he's killed more people than he will ever remember, hasn't he?-- that he finally buckles and bolts.

He ducks into an alleyway as soon as the oppressive sky lifts again, backs himself into the corner of the wall and a dumpster, and shudders, trying to catch his breath against the fear. The despair. Who's next? Who will he kill next time? Meredith? Strange? Yelena? He stays in that alleyway for a long time, crouched down, head in his hands, until the sun goes down or someone else finds him.


IV. Wildcard

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Comments

[worthallthis]

Oh good. Favors are better than talking about memories he's not supposed to have, and all of which have been terrible so far. Even the one that hadn't had anything to do with HYDRA or torture or killing people had been-- sad. Full of worry.

So he nods. "What do you need. I will help if I can."

[sorser]

The request might not be terribly comforting, but he has to make it.

“Well, you know my secret already; feeding my patron in small doses to make sure I have my magic at my disposal. Precautionary, mostly, in case we come across an unexpected danger, an immediate threat — and you know it’s only a matter of time.”

He glances at Winter, trying to get a read on his expression, before continuing.

“Except that inherently comes with a risk, as ADI is more than willing to hammer in our heads. Sorcerers and magic-users going mad with power, feeding patrons and hurting innocents, in order to supply themselves with that constant supply of that power. I don’t want that to happen to me. I don’t intend for it to. But sometimes the unexpected happens, things that transpire beyond our control.”

He pauses. Maybe Winter knows where he’s going with this.

[worthallthis]

The expression is as it was: blank and unruffled, mostly because that's Winter's usual expression when he's not being disgruntled or afraid of something. He's clearly attentive, though, and his mouth does firm up a bit at the certainty that there will be more threats. Winter knows there will be more threats. He's trying to be prepared for them, too, but he doesn't have magic.

At the clear pause for input, Winter tilts his head a little. "You want me to stop you if you need to be stopped," he surmises. He would be Stephen's fall-back murder plan. Or fall-back hit-on-the-head plan.

He considers this, then nods. "Yes. I can do that."

[sorser]

Good. It’s odd how he feels relief when Winter accepts his request without hesitation, without argument. Covering all his bases, even if only existing in a worse-case scenario, eases the anxieties that Stephen tends to keep hidden and under control.

“I know I can trust you to do what needs to be done. In all honesty, it’s not something I ever want to come to pass, but Lehrer told me it can happen in a matter of months. Sorcerers giving in to the pull of an entity.”

[worthallthis]

Winter looks him up and down, as if assessing him. Same assessment as earlier today, and last week, and pretty much the same assessment as when they first met, with additions related to annoying questions about his past and remembering things.

So he says, "You seem normal so far. What should I look for."

[sorser]

It’s a sensible question, if difficult to know how to answer.

“A change in demeanor would be the biggest red flag, probably. The clear pleasure derived from hurting or scaring people, no matter how much I’d try to reason it away.”

Stephen can be very utilitarian, but there’s still a heart beating in his doctor’s chest. He doubts the same could be said if he was ever overtaken by an entity’s influence.

[worthallthis]

Winter nods. "I will watch you for changes, then." He can imagine Steve trying to hide changes from him, but he is very observant. He thinks he can catch changes even if Stephen is being secretive-- being secretive is, in and of itself, a warning sign.

He does not, perhaps tellingly, ask for the same in return. Winter is not interested in collecting people to use magic on him, thank you very much. And he's pretty sure Stephen couldn't take him any other way.

Though it does give him the idea that he should talk to Yelena about it. She has a chance, and she might actually do it. But he also doesn't think he's likely to change all that much. He's already a monster. "How worried about this are you."

[sorser]

“I want to say I’m confident that nothing like that is going to happen to me, but I don’t know,” he says, and it’s truthful enough. In an ideal world, he would have all the self-control and awareness to stop himself from falling too deeply into the rabbit hole. Thing is, he’s sure the previous magic-users who began hurting innocents believed the same thing.

“I’m being as cautious as possible. Refusing to use magic unless absolutely necessary, only feeding my entity in the smallest doses. It’s taking a while, and I’m not accruing nearly enough magic to be comfortable with in the case of an extended emergency, but it’ll just have to do for now. For what it's worth, I don't feel any different.”

[worthallthis]

"You don't seem different to me, either," Winter offers.

Then there's a pause, and since he was given the responsibility to look out for Stephen's state, he dares to ask, "Which entity is it?" If he's intentionally feeding it, he has to know which one it is.

[sorser]

“My guess is the Extinction. Spreading world-ending conspiracy theories is surprisingly easy to do online,” he explains. “Surprising absolutely no one.”

Despite his dry, sarcastic addendum, there’s a little self-deprecation in that humor — rare for Stephen, but their circumstances are unusual, and moral lines have begun to blur, which is the most dangerous part about it.

“Not a fan of how it makes me feel.”

[worthallthis]

Extinction. World-ending. That doesn't scare him, at all, really. It makes him a little... mad? All those people cut out of life too early. ... Like the helicarriers were going to do. He's pretty sure. At the time he hadn't even thought about it, hadn't cared. Now he does. But now he's allowed to protect instead of just kill. He's allowed.

Well. Apparently that's one entity that won't resonate with him at all. That's good to know.

Winters slides Stephen a brief, dubious look. "You shouldn't be a fan. If you were. Then you would get worse. As long as you don't like it, you're still safe."