apocalypsehowcomm | March Catch-All [OTA]

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March Catch-All [OTA]

Who: Winter (Bucky Barnes) and OPEN
When: March catch-all
Where: ADI headquarters, ADI apartments, around town
Summary: Just working, training, and being a different kind of quietly creepy
Warnings: Struggles with personalization

I. Confessions - Closed to Close CR

There are some people who need to know that they might be at risk to continue associating with him: specifically, Kate, Meredith, Jaeger, and Malcolm Bright. Winter will seek them out one by one and... confess. Or, well, say, "I need to tell you something," and then shuffle around like he's embarrassed, angry that he's embarrassed, and afraid of what their response will be.

II. Study - OTA

So Winter needs to learn how to be a person. This requires... study.

Unfortunately, study seems to take the form of creepily watching people all over town. He no longer wears his mask and goggles unless he's actively on ADI patrol or a mission, but his face is not particularly expressive, and having a large guy in a dark coat and combat boots standing on street-corners or in shop windows or sitting on perch benches staring at people (and still not making eye contact when caught at it) is not particularly reassuring.

He also takes the dive (possibly suggested by one of his people) to try reading as another form a study. Fiction. He starts, perhaps stupidly, with romance novels, as this seems like a good way to learn human interactions. He sits in the cafeteria, his apartment, or in the cold in the park with a book with a pretty lady being leaned back by a shirtless man in floral pastel colors in his hand. Mostly when he's doing this, he's frowning.

Please be the one to almost get beaned by the book when he finally gets fed up and disgusted with what he's reading and throws it across whatever room, hall, or outdoor space he's in with an annoyed growl.

III. Prisoners of Consciousness - OTA

It happens when Winter is on patrol. The ADI hallway is broad, if a little dark, and the ventilation shafts are heavy in the ceiling. He's walked this hall for months, now. He knows it well.

So why does the end of the hall seem so far away? Why are all the doors along it-- why are they shrinking to a size he could barely fit his hand through? Where is that window he knows is on this stretch of hall?

It feels like... it feels like another hall, deep inside a concrete bunker in Siberia. That's what this is. He's owned again. He's a thing again. And he sure as hell does deserve it, for all the people he killed, for the Widows he helped corrupt, for the entity that he let attach itself to him somehow and the people he scared to unwittingly feed it.

Anyone else traveling this hall in the mid to late afternoon can find him huddled against the wall, hugging his rifle like a teddy bear, breathing too hard behind his mask. No goggles today, so it's just Winter's wide, damp eyes fixed on the floor.

IV. Trick of the Dark - OTA

Winter is often out and about after dark, whether staring at the shelves at the grocery store trying to make himself pick something out of the myriad of brands available for peanut butter alone, closing up shop at ADI after a long evening of practice or tutelage, or his nightly patrols of the ADI apartments. He does glimpse the strange woman once or twice, but he sees nothing amiss about another person out after dark. That sort of thing, this time? Does not scare him.

Once he does lever his gun at her when she appears too close, but she vanishes quickly after that.

No, mostly what he sees is people of the city, even friends, attacking streetlamps, rushing into stores to turn off lights, climbing up to try and smash overhead lights in the ADI halls. He follows in their wake, puzzled, repairing what damage he can and turning lights back on. If it gets too bad, he approaches the person in question. "Calm down. What are you trying to do."

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That's a valid thought. Winter would love to lick the spoon. Winter does not, however, deserve to lick the spoon. He stares at the floor, in a parade rest in the kitchen entryway.

Kate, at least, has already done her confession. So it's maybe... slightly less awful with her. Slightly. "I." He hesitates. Makes himself say it. "I have an entity too. I didn't mean to. And I don't know which one."

Oh boy. Kate leans the spoon in the batter against the side of the bowl. The brownies can wait. "Why don't we sit down?" This is going to be a conversation. However, it will be a conversation without judgement. She has an Entity of her own.

He shifts from foot to foot, just once, but then follows her to the table and sits. Folds his hands in his lap, lacing the fingers together. He looks a bit like a boy expecting a well-deserved scolding.

She watches him closely. She is very concerned for him. Kate waits until he has sat before sitting down at the table opposite him. "I don't know that everything will be okay but I'm here. We can work through this."

There's a hesitation, then a nod. And then Winter says firmly, "If I ever frighten you. I need you to tell me. I might not notice. But I do not want to frighten you, ever."

"I will." She nods her head, "I promise." Kate is not afraid of Winter. She wonders if she ever could be and the answer is probably, she could under the right circumstances. However, she's likely to be more afraid for him than of him.

"We'll get through this." Kate is tied to an Entity as well. "I assume you told Yelena?"

Being afraid for him is just as bad. Yelena did that, and it still fed his patron. Ugh.

"Yes. She made me talk about it when I was just mad about it." And then made him cry. In a good way. Mostly. "We need to figure out which one it is."

She can't help that. She already has had to bail out Winter once from jail. Kate would rather not do that again which makes her worry (especially when a disaster occurs as is prone to happen in Gloucester.)

"It's good that you told Yelena. She's very smart." Kate thinks on it. "I can tell you how my Entity is fed, the Eye. The Eye likes it when I know things that could get people into trouble. It likes it when I put people on display too. A few weeks ago, I found an ADI employee rummaging through a desk that wasn't theirs. They thought I wasn't going to tell."

Kate's shoulders slump and she makes a face because she knows her behavior hadn't been commendable. "I threatened that I wouldn't for now." She is both embarrassed and ashamed. "It wasn't a lot but it fed The Eye."

Winter considers, then says firmly, "It's not that. It's not violent, either. Not Slaughter or Hunt or Extinction. It's. It's when I wear the mask and goggles and people get nervous. When I hit every difficult target in a series dead on and someone is shocked. When everyone I shot in the nightmare party saw me afterwards. When. When Yelena thought I was going to be less like a person."

"Like they don't know you. Like maybe you're some dangerous stranger? Most people outside of ADI don't know it's you underneath the mask and goggles. If I didn't know you and saw you lurking around, I would feel threatened."

Winter is a person. Kate is certain of it. She doesn't want him to lapse.

He isn't sure he is one yet. But he's going to have to learn, he thinks, if it's not being a person that feeds the Entity. He considers that. "I think most people at ADI know who I am by now. I'm there every day. They just don't like it, sometimes."

"Yeah. Most know you but what about outside of ADI? Like when you go into town?"

"People have been getting used to me, out there," Winter allows, "but they don't mostly know who I am. Unless I go to a place regularly." Which happens at a couple places, but not often.

Winter has really, by this point, kind of become one of the local cryptids. Not necessarily dangerous, because he has not actually ever hurt anyone except people who wouldn't give up their biting phones, but still a little creepy. The fear there had honestly been starting to dry up even before the snow.

"Before that, when you first arrived? Did you feel at full strength then and your strength start to dwindle as time went on? When people got to know you?"

She lets out a sigh. "I wish I had a notepad to write this down in. It would help me think but we don't need any evidence incase ADI decides to snoop. Okay, so we've eliminated four Entities out of the running, the Eye, the Slaughter, the Hunt, and the Extinction." A whiteboard would work too but she doesn't have that so she'll just have to make do!

"Oh. Wait." Winter pushes back up out of the kitchen chair and disappears into his own room, coming out a moment later with a notebook, maybe four inches tall, bound in soft green moleskin. He unties the little ribbon holding it shut and flips to a new page, near the back.

This is deemed important enough for the notebook.

"I keep this with me all the time. If I'm not in the apartment," he explains, pulling a little stub of a pencil from one of his knife sheaths. Yes, he keeps a pencil in with his knives. "It's as safe as it can be."

She watches Winter disappear out of sight and waits patient for his return. She hadn't known that he had kept a journal. In the right (or wrong) hands, a pencil could serve as a weapon so she doesn't give its placement among the knives a second thought. Kate keeps a journal too. It's hidden underneath her mattress (which is probably the first place anyone would look.)

"Anything is safe with you, Winter." Who would dare try to rob him?

"So we've eliminated four Entities. I think if we can figure out what specifically triggers your powers that will help us narrow down which Entity it is."

Technically it's for trying to sort out memories versus nightmares versus hallucinations, but a journal is probably a good enough names.

He writes down a list of all the Entities ADI has told them about. And crosses out the four above. Then he crosses off Buried, Dark, Corruption, and Web. None of them fit.

That leaves Desolation, End, Flesh, Lonely, Spiral, Stranger, and Vast.

"As far as I can tell. It's when I wear my mask and goggles. When I do something most people can't do. When I'm very quiet. And when I've killed someone but they didn't die, and can come back to be afraid of me. Like in the nightmare in October."

She is going to sound like she's rambling, Kate knows. However, it can't be helped. Right now they are just throwing ideas at the wall and hoping it sticks like done pasta should.

"When you wear your mask and goggles, you aren't showing your face." She holds up a hand because she knows that it's a given. "It conceals your identity. People who normally wear masks are either up to no good, like a bank robber, or they need them for protection like playing hockey." But Winter isn't playing hockey or any other sport. "Hmmm. You aren't playing any sport though. There's no cause for people to be afraid of that if you were."

Hopefully, they are on the right track. "I don't think it's the Lonely. You need people to scare."

"It's for protection. And it's habit, just part of gearing up for a mission. And." He considers, trying to think through the reasons HYDRA might have hid his face. "It was easier," he says slowly, working it out as he speaks. "To not. Treat me like a person. When I had no face. It was easier to not be a person. I didn't do things people did. So it was. Was. Appropriate? To not have a face while I did them."

Oh, Winter. Kate is tempted to reach across the table to touch his hand. She refrains as she knows that he doesn't like to be touched. She can't help the look of sympathy that crosses her face.

"What happened to you Winter was not appropriate. They had no right to treat you as they did. You are a person." She doesn't know the full story. It's none of her business to ask though she does appreciate what has been freely given. Kate also remembers what Malcolm had said of Winter.

Kate lets out a little breath. "They turned you into someone to be feared. You were masked. Your identity was concealed. I assume they didn't want your actual face getting out so you could be identified." She reaches up and touches the side of her face as she thinks. "Could it be the Stranger?"

Winter blinks at her a little.

Then he snorts briefly, the somber surprise derailed by a sudden memory. "It also kept me from biting them. I remember that. Put a hand too close to my face unmasked, at the wrong time. And lose a finger." That, too, fits the idea of the Stranger. Of being something not quite human. Willing to take off flesh to keep from being touched.

He scrubs his own hand down his face. "Stranger might fit better than the rest. Yeah. It's not very related to my arm, people in town don't even see that, so probably not Flesh. I don't isolate people, so probably not Lonely. End is still possible, but Stranger fits. Better."

The snort takes her by surprise. Is that a humorous response from Winter? She's not sure so she doesn't say anything. The people who had done this to him seemed to have had no shortage in the ways that they dehumanized him. "It could be the End too," she agrees. "Do people think that they are going to die around you? Does that make you feel stronger?"

"I don't know. I don't know what they think, really. I guess I could start asking them." But then he'd have to scare them first. Or find the people who he knows are still scared of him and bother them, which would probably result in scaring them. Unpleasant. And counter to what he's trying to do, here.

The thought about dehumanizing probably would cinch it for Stranger, really. He went through a lot of loss of self, and that's part of the Stranger's domain, but it's not something he would think about himself. He still hasn't entirely accepted he once had a self to lose.

"You could ask the people who were first afraid of you but no longer are. It might be a good place to start. Do you know anyone like that?"

Winter has to stop and think. He thinks for a long moment, actually, because he can't really think of very many people who were afraid of him but stopped. "I. Don't know. Maybe Martin. He was nervous around me the first time I met him. But he doesn't seem to be anymore." Possibly it was the whole throwing-the-romance-novel-at-his-head thing.

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