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

[worthallthis]

Some people think about it. The stupid former target thought about it. But would he have thought about it so hard if Winter weren't wearing the face of someone he thought was his friend? He doesn't know. (And won't that train of thought be even more pertinent in a couple days when Steve Rogers actually shows up?)

"I don't know anything about the people I killed," Winter admits, putting the thoughts of stupid former targets aside in favor of less stupid former targets. "If they were evil or innocent or. Something else. My handlers just gave me the briefing and set me on them and they died. How did you tell?" He's been going off of whether the people on the other end of his rifle barrel are trying to hurt people, but what if that's wrong? Jaeger might know, if he was in the business of seeking those kinds of people out before.

[bloodalwaystells]

"At first, when I was working for Brighter Dawn, I didn't always get a choice, either. It was 'get information from this man'. 'Make this person leave'. 'Take this item, it doesn't matter how, just do it'."

He wasn't generally a killer for the Company, and that's a little bit of reassurance, but not much. He still did some pretty awful things to innocent people, and he's not going to let that go anytime soon. So he can understand, at least a little.

He lets his breath out, searching for the right response to the rest of it.

"I had information fed to me, often by their victims and survivors. And certain kinds of magic in my world...they leave a stain on the soul. A kind of darkness, a corruption that eats away at sanity and reason. I could often tell just by walking into a room...it's almost a stench." His scarred hands clench into loose fists, a twist of sickness shooting through him.

"And usually, I tried to get a confession before...going further. A lot of them like to talk. To bluster. To threaten. They don't hide what they've done because it's right to them, it's their entitlement. It's their version of the world, where everyone else is there for their satisfaction."

The anger is there, as choking tight as the scar around his neck, and he breathes in again, letting it go.

"Also, most of them tried to kill me outright as soon as they realized they were caught."

[worthallthis]

Okay. Okay, those are things he can look for. That helps some. "The people at HYDRA liked to talk, too, because they thought they were right," he allows. He's pretty sure, now, that they weren't actually the good guys. No matter what they told him. Good guys probably didn't torture and murder and give orders for people to do the same. They probably didn't give long-winded speeches about "the freedom they deserve" and how they needed him to dispense it at the end of a rifle.

"You can't smell it here, though," he guesses. "The magic stain thing." A pause. "Is it just magic? That stains?"

[bloodalwaystells]

"That's exactly it. This is how they think it should be, what they think they deserve, and if you disagree, you're the enemy." It's remarkably helpful when the individuals in question go off on long-winded diatribes about what they deserve, about how the world should be (under their thumb) and what they're willing to do, to accomplish that. It certainly makes the job easier, judging the corrupt and vicious for what they are.

It's never entirely ideal, but it's something Jaeger can live with. That he has to live with, really, but he sleeps better at night than he has any right to.

He doesn't shy away from meeting Winter's gaze, but his tone softens just a bit.

"I can hold an object and pick up visions of its past, including if it's been part of any violence or death. When I Looked at the train car at the circus, I got a very strong impression of the people that burned to death in it." He gives a small shiver, because that had been highly unpleasant. Living through those few brief seconds of impact, the fire and the panic afterward.

Still, that's not quite answering Winter's question. "I know there are people who can read human auras, and see signs of violence and trauma. It's not a common ability, but it stands to reason that other things besides magic can leave stains, too, yes."

[worthallthis]

The eyes meet only for a second before Winter blinks away, himself, focusing down on the tabletop again.

He's not even entirely sure why he asked, at first. He doesn't know if he even has a soul. If he used to, and it's just gone now, torn to shreds by the ones who took his humanity. He doesn't know what a soul would feel like. But apparently even things without souls can be stained. If something can be stained by something other than magic, he bets he is.

"How do you get rid of it? If something's. Stained," he asks. Maybe that would help with being a person. It's worth a shot.

[bloodalwaystells]

Souls are a funny thing. How much can one live through and still have one? Jaeger has asked himself that a million times, but he has to believe that there's still something there. No matter how worn and ragged, the spirit tries to hang on, and if Winter feels any sort of remorse or regret for his past, then...Jaeger can be quietly hopeful on his behalf.

"I think..." he has to pause to think about that, find the right words because it's important to both of them. "If you still feel, there's something there. And the best way to repair it is to try and make amends where you can. To do some good in the world, to make things a little better. It's not perfect, it doesn't erase it all, but it's something, at least. To prove to yourself that you can still care, that you want to make things right."

His smile is thin, strained, and very tired.

"Sometimes, the world needs bad people to do things that need doing. Because things aren't always fair or nice, and it costs us less to do those things. We can spare someone else crossing that line."

[worthallthis]

Winter frowns down at his hands, but he nods. It makes sense. He doesn't want Kate or Meredith to have to kill if they don't have to. Better that he does it, when he's already done so much of it. Is so good at it.

No more kids killing people. He can at least make that promise, that he won't be party to that.

"Protecting people," he says. His own self-appointed mission. "I can do that. I think."

[bloodalwaystells]

It's a small and somewhat bitter comfort, but it's something that they can do, a way to ease the burden on others. That's worth something, in Jaeger's eyes, and he does his best to do it for all the right reasons.

He doesn't always manage, but he tries.

"It's the best we can do. It's not always an easy decision, not always black and white. But some things...some things are simpler. It helps when the bad is bad enough to leave no doubt." He rubs his hand absently, feeling the slick shiny skin of healing scars under his touch. "Or when you have better people to show you how to do it right, what to do and when."

[worthallthis]

Winter has better people. He has Yelena, and Kate (sort of), and Meredith. Malcolm and even Jaeger, here. (Soon he'll have Steve, his original north star.)

So he nods again, more firmly. He'll make it work.

"Thank you," he says. "This helped."

[bloodalwaystells]

Jaeger is willing to do his best. In his heart and mind, he knows what the right thing to do is. He just doesn't always do it, not while under the pressure of fear and pain and shame.

But talking it out, that helps. And if his viewpoint can help someone else, so much the better. Along with reinforcing what he needs, himself.

"I'm glad. If you come up with anything else, feel free to run it by me, and I'm happy to give you my thoughts." There's a flicker of a smile, then. "Perhaps over a beer sometime. Getting out of ADI sometimes would probably be good for all of us, if just for the privacy."