Fear Upon Fear [Log]

[worthallthis]

Who: Winter (Bucky Barnes) and OPEN
When: May catch-all
Where: Medical, the ADI apartments, the library, and the train
Summary: A modified daily routine, book fair, and then the awfulness of a train
Warnings: Continued struggles with personalization, PTSD, medical phobias, catatonia


I. Anti-Medical

After the assault on the circus, Winter spends all of one day in ADI's medical wing, and he spends it alternately flinching and huddling as far from any person as he can get, or completely unresponsive, staring blankly at a wall and letting the doctor poke worriedly at him and his burned leg.

Then in the middle of the night, he flees. Find him outside the the ADI apartment complex at dawn, huddled miserably on the lawn against the bars while waiting for the gates to open.

After that, he spends a few days recovering in his apartment and limping restlessly around the buildings even if moving around is clearly a bad idea, or sitting in whatever common room has the best light, trying to do repairs on his damaged left arm. It creaks and thunks rather than whirring like usual whenever he moves it, and the plates, though cleaned, still show scorch marks.


II. (Not) Well Read

Winter is the opposite of well-read. He has read exactly one book since stumbling into freedom from HYDRA, and he didn't even finish it. So he isn't even particularly interested in the book fair. It's only when people at ADI mention something off about the "quizzes" that he thinks he ought to at least drop by.

He looks distinctly out of place, even uncomfortable, in the library. Something about all the shelves, all the tables, the over-abundance of things to look at and choose, makes him feel off-balance and nervous. It's bad enough that being told he already has a library card elicits growls that make the librarians quail a little. "I have never been in this building before," he hisses at her. "I have never read a book."

Someone might want to distract him.

He doesn't even touch the computers with the quizzes on them, though he does eye them warily, and maybe hovers a little whenever someone he knows is using one. He doesn't trust anything about this. Honestly, he's gotten to the point where he doesn't trust much of anything.


III. Training Wheels Not On

He's not entirely recovered yet, and his arm is still maybe a little glitchy-- not a lot, just a little, and it looks repaired, anyway-- so Winter signs on for the away mission. All of his people are going, anyway, so of course he has to go and protect them. Besides, he doesn't need a working leg to shoot people. There's a rifle with a good scope in his bag, after all.

He makes it all the way onto the platform, but then he's confronted with... a train. The shape of it, the sound the engines make, the steam of it-- he freezes. He can't make himself move closer. Anyone looking close will even note him shaking a little as he stares at it.

And he has no idea why. Which actually makes it worse.


IV. Training Wheels In

Winter makes it on the train. Somehow. Maybe someone coaxes him, maybe someone drags him, maybe he just disassociates right out of his head and follows someone blindly. But now he's on this train, and it is not better. The motion of it makes him feel sick. The sound of it. The smell of it. Looking out the window is impossible. Moving from car to car isn't happening at all.

He spends most of the trip huddled in one of the sleeping cars, sitting on the bed with his arms wrapped tightly around his knees, wedged into the corner it makes with the wall so the motion doesn't rock him more than necessary. He sleeps when he passes out (which isn't often). He eats when people bring him things. He does occasional washcloth baths because he can't bring himself to use the on-car shower, so the stink of fear clings to him most of the time. He picks compulsively at the remaining bandage on his leg or at the plates in his arm or at his hair.

He does better with company. Please keep him company. He leaves the door halfway open at all times, even when he's asleep, in the hopes people won't leave him alone. But he can't quite bring himself to get up and seek people out, either.

Comments

[punched_hitler]

At the question - the perfectly reasonable, and maybe not-unexpected question - Steve glances up. He'd stayed steady, almost detached, academic, trying to explain everything before. Now, he looks almost stricken as he says, "Yes. I do."

But more than that - "I would never use them," he says, fiercely. "I will never - I know things happen here, that we can't expect or explain. But I will protect them with my life."

[worthallthis]

Winter shuts his eyes, his expression, if anything, defeated. "That won't matter. If entities and avatars can reach right into your head and pull things out. Walk people through your memories. I only know they're there. But they're in my brain somewhere, too." So now there's two brains that some fear monster might rip them out of.

"Steve. If someone uses them. If. You have to stop me. You can't just let me hit you. Hit anyone." Something about Steve stopped him before, the other words stopped him before, but only after he'd beat Steve within an inch of his goddamn life. And there's no serum here to heal him up.

[punched_hitler]

Steve doesn't quite wince - but he wishes he could. Because... yeah. Shit. Shit. It's one thing to know he knows them. He'd never use them. Not on pain of death, he'd meant that.

But if someone else can know them. Get them right out of his head. Out of Winter's head -

His mouth tightens, but, "Okay. I will." Because he has. Yeah, all right - that one time, sure. He let Bucky - Winter - beat him to a pulp. He doesn't regret that, either. It had been the right choice. He hadn't wanted to fight him.

But that other time. In what will be Winter's future (if he goes back. Steve believes he can go back). He fought him. He stopped him. He caught up to him and gave him the time he needed to come back to the surface. "Okay," he repeats. "I'll stop you. But I'll do it my way."

He frowns, glancing at the floor, at their feet. "There isn't any way you know of to... protect our minds?" Maybe there is. Maybe they just need to figure it out.

[worthallthis]

Winter shakes his head a little against the train wall, eyes still shut, but he also says, "Go in pairs in missions, on patrols-- stay close to people. So one person can drag the other away. If necessary. Be suspicious of anything weird. Be alert. Nothing can stop us from seeing shit. Or feeling it. But if we're alert. We can control how we react."

[punched_hitler]

"Okay," Steve says, because he'd nod, but Winter's not looking at him. "Okay." He reaches out, puts a hand carefully on Winter's arm - metal, but it doesn't matter to him. "I'll stay alert. And I know you will, too."

Even though he knows how exhausting it is. How exhausted Winter must be, right now, dealing with all of this. This train. Steve hates it all over again, and definitely maybe wishes he'd had more tact than to lead them down the path of conversation that had ended here, but here they are, all the same. And all he can do is promise to keep his friend safe, as best he can. "And if you think I'm compromised - then do what you need to do, too."

Whether that's knock him out or run away or - anything else.

[worthallthis]

Winter's head twitches a little his way at the movement, but he doesn't move away from the touch, he just drops it back down against the wall again. "I will. I might not like it. But I will."

That's when he opens his eyes again and looks over at Steve, actual eye contact for once if Steve is looking at the right place to catch it. He looks kind of haunted. "Be careful, though. I. Don't want to have to shoot you. Or hit you. Or anything else."

[punched_hitler]

"Well, that makes two of us, pal," Steve says, softly. To all of it. He won't like it. He doesn't want to have to do it. But he will, because Winter needs to know someone will, and he trusts Winter to do the same. "But we've got each other's backs. No matter what that means."

He pauses, and then adds, quietly, "On the helicarriers. I - know that wasn't easy for you, either. I know I took the easy way out. I'm - sorry." He doesn't think it was wrong. He would do it again, a hundred times. He'd still believe it would work, every time. But he's still sorry, because he knows what it's like, to be the person left behind, and that could have been Bucky. Winter. And that would've been cruel.

[worthallthis]

An ironic train of thought, given Steve's ultimate plan with the Infinity Stones.

Winter, blissfully unaware, just frowns a little at the apology, looking away again, into the middle distance. "It worked, didn't it," he says. "Coulda wished it worked faster. But it worked. Not sure how getting hit in the face a lot counts as the easy way, anyway."

He'd be surprised if Steve doesn't have nightmares of that fight, too, to be honest.

[punched_hitler]

Yeah, maybe give him enough time and he'll come to that realization, himself. For him, things are - were - different this time around. Whether that conclusion is well-thought-through or not.

Steve has to laugh, a little. He ducks his head. "For me? Getting hit in the face a lot is the easy way."

But he does have nightmares about the thousand other ways things could have gone. Sometimes he doesn't stop. Those are the worst. He always wants to, and then he's trapped in a body that won't, and he wakes up feeling sick with guilt and shame.

"I'm glad it worked." That will always be true. "Sorry I couldn't be there to do it sooner."

(There might be some part of his plan with the stones to change that. He doesn't know yet. He can't pretend he hasn't thought about it. He has.)

[worthallthis]

"You didn't know," Winter shrugs. "I was a ghost. I didn't exist." How could Steve have gotten there sooner when he worked so hard to leave no trace of himself behind? "Anyway. They never would've. Let you near me, if it wasn't that mission. If they weren't about to win."

[punched_hitler]

I didn't know because I left you for dead and tried to kill myself is what Steve definitely thinks, but doesn't say. That's not something he necessarily wants to lay at Winter's feet, and especially not now, while he's still wedged into a corner and trying not to be terrified. Steve is not that cruel.

"Well. They were wrong about winning," is all he ends up saying, because really, letting him near this man was what made it such a big mistake, and he has to be grateful for it, all the same. "Maybe I just wish they'd gotten too damn sure of themselves even at least a few years earlier, then."

But he can see why they didn't. They're very, very good at the long game. He is not.

[worthallthis]

"They were wrong," Winter agrees. And that's good. Now that he knows, now that he can decide, he doesn't ever want that many people to die. That's why he's on this goddamn train on the way to stop people who want to do that same thing, just with magic instead of guns mounted on an airship.

He looks back at Steve finally, making it to about the level of his cheekbone this time. "Thank you. For stopping them. Stopping me."

[punched_hitler]

Steve's lips twitch, like he might smile; if he does at all, though, it's a wry, almost tired thing. "Well. Thank you for stopping."

He means that. He knows it could have gone down very differently. He thinks about that a lot; less than he used to, but it's still there.

"I just want you to be the one in charge of you. Whatever decisions you make. They should be yours."

[worthallthis]

"I do have a boss, Steve." He pauses, bites the inside of his cheek once, then allows, "Not the same as a handler. I know. I think about things now. About what orders to follow. I'm me. Whatever 'me' really is, it's not the asset."

[punched_hitler]

"It's not you, no," Steve agrees softly, trying to be encouraging rather than guilty or angry. Because he's glad Winter has come this far, that he knows he's not what they made him, that he has some control, even when other things are so very out of their control. They're both on this train, after all, trying to stop something neither of them really had a choice in joining the fight against.

Even if he knows they both would have made the choice to do it, anyway. In a way, they did, rather than walking out the door of ADI and never looking back.

"All I want is for you to choose whose orders to follow. I'm glad you are."