A Return and Regret [LOG/OTA]

[worthallthis]

Who: Winter (Bucky Barnes) and OPEN
When: Late June/early July
Where: On the road, buzzing around ADI, moping around town, and the beach
Summary: July catch-all
Warnings: Paranoia, grief, grumpiness


I. Road Trip!

Somebody (Yelena) has the bright idea to not subject Winter to a fucking train again, and they get a car. Probably rented. Possibly stolen. ... probably rented. Winter hardly uses the money he gets from ADI, he's got plenty to spare for the means to avoid going catatonic on a fucking train for two days.

So he, Yelena, Kate, and Steve all bundle into an economical sedan and take the long way back to Gloucester. They trade off driving (except for Steve, whose hands are damaged) and stay in cheap motels and eat roadside junk food and play a variety of music and stupid travel games.

It is possibly the best four days of Winter's remembered life. He's actually kind of smiling by the end of it.


II. Missing Friends

People Winter knows have gone missing before. It's impossible not to have lost people when you work for ADI and your friends consist pretty much entirely of people who get into dangerous situations weekly. Winter has not actually lost a good friend before.

He shows up at Meredith's old desk with an extra coffee and an extra donut and finds it empty. He searches the building, and can't find her. He goes back to the ADI housing and checks her apartment. He makes the rounds, looking in every place Meredith usually goes. He asks people, "How long has she been gone?" and "Where was the last place you saw her?"

And he looks morose when he doesn't get any helpful answers. Meredith is just gone.


III. Winter the Grouch (Birdwatching + Routine)

Though Winter gets back into his usual routine, he's kind of a grump about it. Meredith is gone. Things are about as awful at ADI as they always are. He aches all the time, which is normal, but lately it feels like it's getting worse. (Really, it is getting worse, because while he exercises kind of obsessively and is a fan of long baths to soak in, he doesn't really take care of himself in any other ways.)

He settles back into his usual routine: patrols with ADI during the day, teaching self-defense after work in the ADI gym or practicing alone if no student shows up, twice weekly forays into town for 1) lunch in a cafe, most likely with a friend, and 2) a prowl around Dogtown, though this time it's only around the outskirts, given the fencing.

He stares hard at the silent birds as he circles. Winter is naturally hypervigilant as it is, veering into paranoia at the worst of times, but it's not helping to have the feeling that all the birds are watching you even walking back to the apartments. It's bad enough that a flock of pigeons taking flight startles him into pulling his ever-present handgun and glowering at them over the sights as they fly away. "Fuck," he mutters, and hopes nobody saw that.

But of course somebody saw that.


IV. Not a Beach Bum

Though Winter goes to the beach thing, he resolutely does not have fun. He stays wrapped up in two layers of shirt (though the jacket gets ditched halfway through the afternoon), heavy jeans, and his combat boots. Someone who would recognize such things might note the shape of a gun holstered in the small of his back and there's certainly knives under his clothes, though those are harder to find.

He prowls around, keeping an eye on people and chasing off birds, and only takes a break from his impromptu patrolling twice: once for a plate full of food (fully one third of it is Kate's brownies), and once to prod at the sandcastle making equipment. Somebody show him how to actually make a sandcastle? Maybe he'll have some fun on accident.

Comments

II-ish

[musicdied]

It's late afternoon when Yelena lopes into the training gym, towel slung over one shoulder and water bottle dangling from two fingers. She pauses when she spies Winter, head canting slightly to one side. This is outside of his normal routine - and while that isn't unheard of, the ferocity with which he's attacking a punching bag makes the hair on the back of her neck stand up with the certainty that something is amiss.

"Winter?" she says, rocking back into motion, and circling around to the side so she doesn't come up in a blind spot. "Did something happen?"

[worthallthis]

Winter pauses, breathing a little harder than normal, and steadies the bag with one hand. His voice is particularly flat when he asks, "Did you know. About Meredith."

[musicdied]

"Not until we got back," Yelena says quietly. She glances away, her expression a curious blend of guilt and muted melancholy. "I suspected when she didn't meet me on the train like we had been planning, and didn't answer any of my texts after. But I wasn't sure until we after we got back that she was gone, and not just sick or caught up in something. Or in trouble somewhere I could not help her."

[worthallthis]

Okay. Okay, then he's not the only one who didn't realize. Yelena had been-- kissing on her before they left. If anyone other than a roommate was going to know, it'd be Yelena.

"Malcolm knew. She disappeared before we left. He didn't tell anyone." He feels weirdly-- betrayed, by that. Most of his anger has turned inward now, that he should have known, that he should have done something to keep her safe, but there's still a little ember of it at Malcolm for not even thinking to ask Meredith's people.

[musicdied]

"I am not surprised," Yelena says, grimacing slightly.

She does not, however, particularly want to discuss Malcolm. She's more interested in Meredith, and in Winter's reaction to having one of his people go abruptly missing.

"It couldn't have been long before we left. We both expected to be too busy to see each other for a few days before the train, but we were in touch before that."

[worthallthis]

"It wasn't. Or I would've noticed and checked in with her, too," Winter agrees. "I brought her coffee most mornings, at her desk. And a donut. And we had training." He gives the punching back another smack with his fist, but it's not a proper punch, just a kind of frustrated expression of emotion.

[musicdied]

"I checked with the hospitals," Yelena says quietly. "And the morgues. She wasn't there."

Just gone. Like Wanda, like Strange, like so many other people who simply disappeared one day.

"It's starting to remind me of when I was a little girl."

[worthallthis]

That earns her a sidelong look. "Which part." The part where girls would drop out of the Red Room? Failed out, killed, or run away and then killed? The part before he met her, that he doesn't know anything about?

[musicdied]

"Waking up to find the girl in the next bed gone," Yelena says, rolling one shoulder in a shrug, as though trying to play it off. It doesn't work. Even with someone who doesn't know her as well as he does, it wouldn't work. "No body, no explanation, just an empty space. Until another girl was brought in to fill it."

She fixes him with a severe look. "If you or Kate go missing, I am burning this fucking city to the ground."

[worthallthis]

Winter's expression goes a little more flat. Yeah. That doesn't surprise him at all. He can guess what happened to those girls, all right; he already had. Some of them he probably knew. Loved, in what way he could back then. But he'd forgotten them by the time he could have noticed they were different.

Fucking HYDRA. Fucking Red Room. Yelena isn't fooling him, but he's not calling her on it, either. They both know he doesn't need to.

He looks back up when she looks at him again, meets her eyes briefly, then slides away again. That doesn't really surprise him, either. He can't even protest, because he feels it, too. She loves him; he's her family. She's his team; he loves her, too. "I can't promise. None of us knows how it happens. If it's. Entity shit. Or ADI. Or just fucking falling into a hole somewhere. But. I'm planning on staying right here. With you."

[musicdied]

"Good," she says, baring her teeth in a fierce expression that can only just technically be called a grin. "We go down together. Or we find a way out together. All of us. I am done with leaving the people who matter behind."

[worthallthis]

"The only people I have who matter are here," Winter says after a moment. "I don't want to ever leave any of you." He rests his forehead against the punching bag a moment, shutting his eyes. "Steve asked me to make sure. If anything happened. If it became necessary. I would stop him."

It's related to the subject of loss and leaving people behind, and it's also another thing weighing on his mind.

[musicdied]

"He's seen what the avatars are like now," Yelena says. "What they're really like, not just the stories."

She's silent for a moment, before adding quietly, "It doesn't have to be you."

[worthallthis]

He rolls his head enough to open one eye and fix it on her. "You mean it could be you," he surmises, voice flat, not with denial but with suppression of emotion. He doesn't know what he thinks about the idea yet.

Relief, but also fear. Distaste. Something that squirms in his chest that says it should be him, no one else. He's not sure what to name that one. A tiny sliver of something possessive. Steve is his. His mission. (No, absolutely not that, never that again.)

[musicdied]

She dips her head slightly in confirmation.

"It isn't a decision that needs to be made now. Hopefully it isn't a decision that needs to be made ever, because Steve Rogers is a good man who doesn't deserve to have his soul devoured by nightmares. But if it does, just know that you don't have to be the one, and you don't have to be alone."

[worthallthis]

His gaze slides away, past her again. It's a hard decision. He did promise... but he also knows what happened the last time he was supposed to kill Steve Rogers. And he didn't even know why, last time. This time, he knows. "I'll think about it."

Then he holds out his hand in her direction, vaguely, like he wants hers in it. Not alone. He's at least holding onto that. "I. Hope it never happens, too."

[musicdied]

"Okay."

She slides her hand into his without hesitation, and gives his palm a gentle squeeze. "We will take care of him," she says, a repeat of her promise from the day Steve had arrived and sent Winter rushing to find her. "So that it doesn't have to happen."

[worthallthis]

He squeezes back, then finally pushes up off the punching bag. "Did you really want to exercise today?" he asks, a little plaintively. "Or can we go find something chocolate or fried or. Or something really bad for us?" All the unhealthy stuff tastes the best. They can exercise later.

(Though maybe he should change his shirt first, he's been punching that bag for a while now.)

[musicdied]

"I can take a rest day today," she replies. "Let's get changed, and then we will go hunt down something that is absolutely terrible for us."

[worthallthis]

"Good." He heads for the lockers, where he left the rest of his clothes from the day, keeping her hand for now. "Meredith would like that," he adds, subdued. "Us getting terrible food."

[musicdied]

"She would," Yelena agrees. "But we should also get very good coffee to honour her properly."

She's quiet for a moment before adding, "I'm sorry she's gone. I know she was important to you."

[worthallthis]

He's silent for a long moment, keeping her hand for now, though it's kind of awkward. He's not sure how to walk naturally with someone attached to his hand like that. But he finds he'd still rather have it than not.

"She was," he finally says. "Is. You, too, though. She was the only person you kissed for more than one night."

[musicdied]

Yelena's quiet for a few seconds, then bobs her head in acknowledgment.

"I like her," she admits. "I didn't love her. I don't know if I would have loved her, if we had more time. But I like her. And I don't want to just forget her, the way so many people who vanished have been forgotten."

The way so many of the girls she'd trained with had been forgotten, because forgetting was better than the constant dread of being next.

[worthallthis]

"We won't forget. I haven't forgotten anyone yet." He might not think of them all often, but they're still there, in his head. Strange and Wanda and Monika who named him. The kind older man who broke his hand on the glass. Now Meredith, too. Meredith, he might think of more often.

[musicdied]

"Good," she says quietly. She wants to say that they will find them, all their missing souls. She wants to say they will avenge them, if they don't find them living.

She can't promise either thing, and so she just squeezes his hand, and leaves it at that.