Doppelgangers, dreams, and downtime, oh my [OTA log]

[worthallthis]

Who: Winter (Bucky Barnes) and OPEN
When: October and early November
Where: All around town
Summary: Catch-all for October and November because I am So Slow
Warnings: Ruthless hunting, doubles, depersonalization


I. Doppelgangers - Winter's

If you run into Winter and he gives you a cold stare... that might not be Winter. His gruff but generally helpful demeanor is nowhere to be found, and he stalks by you. Maybe bumps your shoulder as he passes. Maybe pushes you!

Try to talk to him and he glares in silence, or occasionally growls. Let him into his apartment at your risk, because he's going to punch a wall or break something with his metal arm.

Mostly, though, he stands and stares into the middle distance, in a stiff parade rest, tense and coiled like the worst version of himself from over a year ago. Try to talk to him. Go ahead. Give it a go and see how it goes.


II. Doppelgangers - YOURS

Winter figures out what's going on pretty quickly, works out code words with his closest people, distributes Yelena's trackers on some of them, and then goes hunting. He has his knives, and his handguns, and occasionally if he's tracked something out of the city proper, his rifle. He's looking for familiar faces acting strangely. Looking for people whose smiles are wrong.

Looking for himself, too, because he will not allow something with his face to hurt his people. To hurt any people who don't deserve it. Any of his friends who want to help him are welcome to try and detain his double long enough for him to come and try to kill it, if they can get a signal to him in enough time.


III. Dreams - Winter's

Winter's patron is the Stranger. For the past month, he has been stalking an Asset version of himself, and in his dreams that tugs at him again. He stalks through the dreamscape-- the helicarrier falling apart around him; the concrete and metal halls of a HYDRA base; someone's fancy home-- with his rifle in his hands, expression fighting with blankness. Anyone he comes across gets the barrel leveled at them without hesitation, but he doesn't shoot.

He's trying hard to remember why he doesn't want to shoot.

Eventually he wins against the Stranger, pulls himself out of the assassin's mindset, but that doesn't mean he's done. The doppelganger that he already killed out in the real world is here again, and its stalking him now, too, and whoever is in his dream with him. "Stay close to me," he says, and holds his metal arm around his companion.


IV. Dreams - YOURS

Did you want Winter in your nightmare? Did I not find it because October completely ate my brain? Feel free to link it here, or give me a summary, and Winter will absolutely slip into your nightmare!


V. Downtime

No doll parts are mailed to Winter this week, and he isn't affected by the need to eat things that aren't actually food, and no one in their right mind would put this man to decorating for a party... so the first couple weeks of November are pretty quiet for Winter. He does his patrols, he brings the team donuts a couple times in the morning, he sits in public places and reads out loud to himself or to anyone else who wants to sit with him and listen, and he actually visits a few stores to stare at clothing in an attempt to find something that isn't a black hoodie and yet doesn't feel awful to wear.

He might also be found prowling around the local neighborhoods, as if looking at... the houses? Weird.

If he runs into any friends or even NPCs having issues with any of the doll parts or the food cravings, however, he's happy to put his nose into things and try to make them stop....

Comments

V. (Now that's a Clothes Call!)

[bossyboiler]

Who happens to be with Winter as he's trying to find something to wear? It's Kate. She is doing her best to try to keep it basic but it's difficult. He wants to be comfortable and Kate will sacrifice comfort if it means she will look cute.

"How do you feel about navy blue?" She has her eyes on a zip-up sweater and is currently testing it for softness.

[worthallthis]

"I. Like blue?" he says after a moment, tentative, like he's not sure if he really does like it. He is sure, but it's still a little weird to say so. His cold-weather coat is about that color, even.

"How does it feel?" Because soft is a thing he wants, too. He wants comfort. He wants... snuggly, even. He won't say it out loud, exactly, but given the things he's been gravitating to so far, it's not hard to guess.

[bossyboiler]

"I like blue too. I think it'll be a good color for you." The sweater feels a little soft to her, however, not particularly snuggly. "It feels fine to me." She glances at him. "What size do you wear up top?" Kate isn't sure if he's a large or something else as she riffles through the different sizes. "Maybe we could try a flannel shirt too? Those are fairly soft."

[worthallthis]

"It depends on the shirt. I just hold them up to see if they look big enough, usually." When he even bothers with that much. If he buys something that doesn't fit, it either ends up in a pile in the back of his closet, or he wears it anyway and it either winds up on top of smaller layers or stretched out of shape. "Flannels are the plaid ones, right?"

[bossyboiler]

"Winter," Kate chides gently and pulls an extra large and large sweater. He's not Cortana. She won't subject him to trying things on when men sizes seem to be standardized which is very different than the voodoo sizing methods women have to put up with on this planet.

"Yes, they are. After a few washings they become softer." She eyes another sweater style but moves on. She doesn't want to overwhelm him with choices. "Do you know what you want to look like?"

V

[abrightboy]

Malcolm sees Winter reading in the cafe and he slips up to the table with his drink.

"Mind if I sit? I love this book."

[worthallthis]

Winter looks between the book and Malcolm. "You love The Count of Monte Cristo?" he asks, as if clarifying. He's drifted towards older books, in his attempts to explore genres. Older books and science fiction, or sometimes both.

[abrightboy]

"It's one of my favourites," Malcolm tells him, sitting. "Since I was a kid."

[worthallthis]

"Parts of it seem familiar," Winter admits, considering the pages in front of him. "Just a little. Like maybe I read it before, too."

V

[failedpromise]

It's probably good that Cortana still can't eat, because if she could Winter would probably find her munching on rocks.

Instead, she's out taking a walk, getting used to wandering around town in her robot body. She doesn't really have any sort of goal and is, in fact, aimlessly strolling through a residential area when she spots Winter looking at ...houses?

Curious, she waves, then crosses the street to get to him.

"Hey Winter. Looking for something?"

[worthallthis]

He half-turns towards her, offers a little smile to whatever illusion ADI puts on her new self. "Not in particular. Just. Thinking about houses, I guess. I've never lived in one before." He's pretty sure of this. It feels true.

[failedpromise]

Cortana smiles back at him. She doesn't actually look any different from the way her illusion did before. That is a slender, pale skinned woman with dark hair and bright blue eyes, appearing to be somewhere in early adulthood.

Her movements are a little off still, but that's about it.

At his words, she takes a moment to glance curiously at the houses herself. "Really? You know, I never have either." But that's not so surprising for her, AI don't really need housing of this sort.

[worthallthis]

"You lived in a spaceship," Winter points out, giving her a look that says he might be a tiny bit jealous. Which is different, for him. "That's cooler."

V-ish

[musicdied]

In the week since Ava's broken body had been found on ADI grounds, Yelena has been unusually absent. She's been busy at headquarters, or visiting the Holy Light Church, which is no longer a strange oasis against the Lullaby Girl's lure but still nags at her in a way she's not entirely certain isn't just her own paranoia, or on patrol, or helping with the set-up at Hammond Castle, or out past curfew - never without a message, but with far more frequency than is her usual habit.

Last night, she was actually home, to bed early and sleeping late, and so it is that when she catches up to Winter, it's while he's on patrol. Along one of the beaches today, largely deserted in the November cold, but still a potential point of ingress for threats from the sea, of which they've had far too many of late. She has two cardboard cups in her hand, both steaming gently, and she holds one out in offering as she falls into step beside him.

"You look very cold," she says, by way of greeting. "Hopefully that means any water zombies will freeze solid today, and we won't have to deal with them."

[worthallthis]

"Haven't seen any more of those since the snake thing stopped thrashing around," Winter points out, and he does pop up his collar before accepting the coffee. "Thankfully. They freaked Cortana out."

Didn't bother Winter really. He was happy to just shoot them. It was familiar.

[musicdied]

"That doesn't mean they won't come back," she replies. "Whoever sent them and the garbage mermaids is still out there."

Her nose crinkles slightly. "Too many assholes are still out there."

[worthallthis]

"There are always assholes out there," Winter agrees.

He looks at her sidelong. They're away from the apartment, here. Away from ADI. He hasn't been able to talk to her about her nightmare. "Yelena," he starts, then stops, unsure how to ask.

II

[clavesregni]

There's something a little too sharp about how Caitlyn is dressed. The crease in her neatly ironed trousers is a little too perfect, the knot in her tie looks more like it was done by a machine than a person who still occasionally has to look at a diagram to get it right because the concept of a Windsor is new to her. The heels on her shoes are just a bit higher than normal, making it that much easier for her to look down her nose at nearly everyone she passes by.

Two of her fingers tap against her coffee cup, a perfectly typical little fidget that Caitlyn does when she's thinking. The wind blows a lock of hair across her face, and she brushes it back behind her ear with the same precise movement she always uses.

"Winter," she says when she catches sight of him. There's something disdainful in her tone, and her smile doesn't reach her eyes. "Why are you called that, anyway? Surely you've got a real name."

[worthallthis]

Winter frowns at her. The uncertainty is as much because he doesn't actually know Caitlyn very well as for the weird question. "It is a real name." It's his name. "If people can be named Summer and Autumn. Why not Winter. Anyway, I chose it so it's mine." Well, technically a teenaged girl had chosen it, but he accepted it, and it became his.

[clavesregni]

She raises an eyebrow at him before taking a sip of her coffee, and then pulls a face. "You know, I think the barista fancies me. Or she did. I put her in her place. A Kiramman would never stoop to dating someone who performs menial labour for a living. I suspect she poured the coffee quite poorly on purpose. Retaliation for my simply telling her the truth."

She's very deliberate, when she dumps the coffee out, to ensure that some of it splashes at Winter's shoes before she tosses the cup onto the ground.

[worthallthis]

Even what little Winter knows about Caitlyn goes wildly against everything she just did and said there. He looks from his coffee-splashed combat boots to Caitlyn's face... and then, without any warning whatsoever, he punches her. In the nose. Not to kill, not yet, but to see if she bleeds red or sawdust. To that end, he's using his flesh hand, not the metal one.

If it's really her under some kind of mind control, a thought which comes to him readily and makes him want to bite something, then maybe the hit will bust her out of it.

IV (a million years late!!)

[punched_hitler]

The nightmare Winter finds himself in is a strange mishmash; he "appears" in the hallway of an old Brooklyn tenement (it's their building, if he happens to remember) but everything looks wrong. That's because everything is too big - the ceiling appears higher than he might be used to, the doors a little taller, the knobs maybe not quite in the right place.

But despite the seemingly empty hallway - he's standing outside one particular door, their door - the sounds coming from outside the building might be much more familiar: the sounds of war, of guns and tanks and bombs and men shouting and screaming and dying. They might be muffled by the walls, but they're unmistakable.

For right now, standing in the hallway at least, he seems to be alone... Even if he might not quite feel alone.

yaaaaay hi Steve nightmare <3

[worthallthis]

The hallway is-- it's disorienting. He doesn't remember it, he doesn't, but he still knows that this floorboard squeaks and there's a nail sticking out of the wall there that he can't get his clothes caught on. And he knows there's a spare key to this specific door hidden in a crack in the wainscotting a couple feet away.

The only way he could know that is if he's lived here. The thought makes him feel vaguely ill, more than the sounds of bombing and death from outside the thin walls.

He makes a guess. "Steve?"

XD

[punched_hitler]

The door opens and there is indeed Steve - small, skinny, eyes red-rimmed and face flushed - on the other side. He's wearing a standard infantry uniform from the 40s, even if it's hanging off him, a size or two too big, at least. There's definitely blood smeared on it. It doesn't appear to be his, at least.

"What are you doing here?" he demands. He definitely sounds angry.

[worthallthis]

That hits him harder than he expected, looking down at Steve. Winter is struck dumb for a moment before he shakes himself out of it. He has a job to do. "Looking for Ava," he says. "Steve. This is a nightmare."