March Catch-All [OTA]

[worthallthis]

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."

Comments

[musicdied]

Yelena nods once, then turns on her heel and heads for the door at a brisk clip. She will tidy up later. She will track down Winter's once-friend later, once she's figured out just how much damage control is going to be needed.

"Vents, closet, or someone's office?" she asks. As far as she can tell, there isn't really a pattern - people appear where they appear - but those do seem to be the most common options. And more importantly, it is - should be - easy enough to answer.

[worthallthis]

"Vents. Why is it always vents," he mutters. He's run into so many people who appeared in the vents, himself. Then, louder, he adds, "He's from the same year you are. And that Wanda and Strange were from."

So the "Bucky" Steve knows is... very much not Winter. "He was unhappy that my name is Winter now," he adds, sounding-- maybe the tiniest bit offended, and the tiniest bit hurt. It's his name. He decided that. It doesn't matter if at one point it was part of a ghost story. It's his now.

[musicdied]

"He will have to get over it," Yelena says, in a tone that leaves no room for compromise. "It's not his decision, what you choose to be called."

It's not that she's entirely unsympathetic - it would be so very easy to look at that choice of name and see a lingering wound, and not a decision to claim something for his own. But that imperfect understanding is far less important than the sense of identity Winter has begun to build.

[worthallthis]

That helps. That's bolstering, that someone else agrees with him, that his name is his and he doesn't need-- that other one. "Okay," he says, a little breathlessly with relief. "Okay, good."

He breathes out slow, trying to focus on what else to tell Yelena. "I told him about you. About Wanda and Stephen, even though they're gone. About Peter."

A pause. "Oh, there's a boy who knows me, too. Peter. But he didn't complain about the name. And I didn't know him."

[musicdied]

"I think I met him, unless there are two new boys named Peter running around."

Which is entirely possible, and some day she will sit down and puzzle over why there's been this bizarre constellation of people from their world who are all interconnected in some manner. But right now, that's not the important thing.

"And Rogers knowing will make things easier. Do you want me to run interference for a little while, to buy you some space?"

[worthallthis]

He's already considered this, and he shakes his head, looking kind of aggrieved about it. "Thank you. But I don't. I don't think I can avoid him. I already told him not to bother avoiding me." Not necessarily because avoiding him might be difficult with ADI and housing and such, though there is that; mostly he's not sure he can keep himself from practically stalking the guy. There's a part of him that wants to know. Wants to see. Wants to be right there to watch his back.

It's almost annoying. With Yelena, Kate, and Meredith he understands it. He's felt the urge grow with time. With Rogers it's just there.

"I want him to be safe, too," he finally explains.

[musicdied]

Yelena considers this, jabbing absently at the button for the elevator that will facilitate their escape from ADI's basement.

"You remember him," she says after a moment, somewhere between a question and a statement. "Not the history, but the feelings. Part of it is still there."

[worthallthis]

Winter makes a wordless, annoyed noise. "The last time I saw him. I tried to kill him. Then he said-- something. And I saw-- something. Remembered it. So I saved him, instead. He changed the mission."

Not even Yelena, who is so important to him now, broke him out of proper obedience to his handlers. A bunch of little girls couldn't do it, but one guy letting him punch his face in could. That doesn't seem right.

[musicdied]

She nods slowly. "He is a catalyst."

A moment's pause, in which she studies Winter sidelong.

"Are you worried him being here will change things again? Or that he'll expect it to?"

[worthallthis]

"Yes. And yes." Feelings are hard to put names to, but he knows things will change with Steve Rogers here. Steve Rogers always changes things. He doesn't know how he knows that. He wants to punch the wall, but he knows that will both hurt his shoulder and be pointless.

"He says we were friends. Before," he explains, staring blankly at the elevator wall. "He said I knew him my whole life. I remember when he was small, just a little. I don't know what to do with that. With him. But I don't want him to be hurt by this place."

[musicdied]

"You don't have to do anything with it," Yelena says quietly. "And if you decide you want to - that you want to see what more you can remember about your past, or that you want to see if you can be friends now - you don't have to do it right away."

She watches the floor tick up as the elevator rises.

"You can give yourself time. And give him time, to get used to the person you are instead of the person he remembers."

[worthallthis]

Normally, Winter's pretty good at waiting. At giving things time. For some reason, this is harder. He shoves his hands into his pockets to help resist that punching things urge, but he definitely looks a little surly about it all.

"I told him what apartment I'm in," he admits. "For checking in. So we know if the other one disappears. So. He might come by sometime. If I don't find him before then and get his phone number instead."

[musicdied]

"I think he will probably come by even after you get his phone number," Yelena replies carefully. It's half a warning, and half a bid to gauge his reaction to the idea of Steve Rogers becoming a regular visitor to their apartment.

[worthallthis]

It's met with the kind of shoulder-hunch that says Winter knows that perfectly well, and he's not happy about it, but he's also not necessarily upset about it. "He actually offered to avoid me. So if I told him not to come by, he would." He's probably not going to tell him that, though, unless Kate and Yelena put up some kind of protest.

So it's as much an offer as anything else, in case it will bother Yelena. "What do you know about him?"

[musicdied]

Yelena rolls one shoulder in a shrug. "I keep up - kept up - with what the Avengers are doing. They're a very popular news topic. So I know things he's done, some of his history. I know my sister cared about him very much. And Alexei thought of him as a rival."

She rolls her eyes briefly at that. The stories that had fascinated her as a little girl don't fit into any sort of credible timeline.

"But him as a person? Not a lot."

[worthallthis]

Avengers. He isn't actually sure what that is, aside from, apparently, something Steve was part of. That group's name wasn't part of the briefing he was given.

He chews on the inside of his cheek for a moment, then asks, "What did the Avengers do?" Maybe he can glean something from that. Try to fit the actions of this group Steve deigned to be a part of to the little slivers of memory he has and build at least a slightly bigger picture.

Because, to be honest, the little bit of Steve he's seen here so far doesn't seem to be fitting those slivers very well. Maybe that's what ten more years will do to a guy?

[musicdied]

"They were superheroes," Yelena says, and there's a hint of apology in the small smile she gives him, because she's painfully aware that here, in this world choked with monsters and desperation, that sounds absolutely ridiculous.

The elevator chimes, offering blessed escape out onto the ground floor, and beyond that onto the grounds.

"Do you - were you briefed on the invasion of New York?"

[worthallthis]

He thinks hard, but it doesn't bring up so much as the impression of a briefing. And he thinks if there was an actual invasion, he'd remember something. Hell, it seems like the kind of thing you might want to wake your wind-up assassin up for. It's a little weird that it seems like they didn't. "There was an invasion of New York?"

[musicdied]

She nods confirmation.

"Aliens. The Chitauri. It wasn't a long invasion, but it caused a lot of damage. Mostly, it's relevant because that's where the Avengers got their start. They stopped the aliens before they could spread, and after that, they kept being called in to deal with strange threats. Including Hydra, after it was exposed."

She puffs out her cheeks, then blows out a slow breath. "I don't have a lot of the details of those missions, because they were after the file leak, but some of them were high profile. The Avengers being there made some of them high profile."

[worthallthis]

"Aliens." A pause. "Huh."

He thinks he might be more surprised if he hadn't spent the better part of a year here with rat people and tall pink people and people with magic. Aliens seems almost normal, compared to some of that. "You'd think they would've woken me up for that," he comments, almost annoyed by it. "Alien invasions."

It's probably for the best, though. If Steve Rogers could break through and rewrite HYDRA's mission later... imagine what he would've done if he'd just run into him in the middle of an alien attack. He shakes himself. "He's going to get himself into trouble here."

[musicdied]

"Yes," Yelena agrees, wincing slightly as though in anticipation of an inevitable headache. "But he'll have us to watch his back."

Winter because that's what he does - he protects the people who are important to him, even if he doesn't quite grasp why they're important. And her because Steve Rogers is important to Winter, and was important to Natasha.

And maybe just a little bit because, if she ever reaches the world they call home again, she wants to see the look on Alexei's face when she says she at one point helped Captain America.

[worthallthis]

Winter hesitates for a beat. She's right that he will, he doesn't think he can help himself, but she said us.

He has to know. Has to confirm that maybe it's not just his job alone to keep Steve Rogers safe. Was it always his job, alone? He feels like this is something he has been doing... a long time. It was the first thing he'd thought when the mission fell apart, that he was supposed to be protecting this stupid target he'd just about killed. There was no magic to protect him from, in their world. Here, there is. Here, he has... a number of people to protect.

So, just to make sure: "Both of us?"

[musicdied]

Yelena nods once, sharp and decisive.

"We're a team," she says, gesturing between the two of them to make clear just who she means by 'we'. "It's important to you that something terrible doesn't eat him, and that makes it important to me."

A moment's pause, and she adds, "And everything I've heard says he is a good man, so it's probably the right thing to do."

[worthallthis]

Some tension goes out of him, and all the wariness. "We are a team." That's his word. It's not her word, but she uses it sometimes when, he thinks, she wants to make a point.

He should use her word, now that he knows it's right. They're outside, so he won't embarrass her in front of anyone or endanger her by saying it. So he says: "I do love you." Maybe he says it a little too abruptly, but he still says it. "I figured that out. What it feels like. And I do."

[musicdied]

She's surprised enough to miss a step, and stumbles a little before catching herself. She blinks at him for a moment, then smiles, bright and sunny and genuine.

"I'm glad you know what it feels like," she says.

She's also touched that he reciprocates her affection, but she'd already known she was important to him - important enough to reach for personhood in part to spare her distress.

Recognizing and acknowledging something as potentially vulnerable as love, though - that's significant.