apocalypsehowcomm | August Catch-all

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August Catch-all

Who: Bucky Barnes (AKA the dude who doesn't have a proper name right now) and OPEN
When: August catch-all
Where: ADI headquarters, ADI apartments, around town
Summary: Just working, training, and being quietly creepy
Warnings: Internalized depersonalization

I. Patrols - ADI headquarters, ADI apartments

Working security is not entirely mindless, but it's close. Patrol around the outside of the ADI building complex, patrol through the buildings, prod the occasional air vent in the ceiling or panels in the wall just in case there's someone hiding in there, then repeat. It's familiar. It's comfortable. It's not quite mindless, but it's close enough to let him settle into diffuse focus where he doesn't have to worry about lack of orders and going home to not having anything to do there, either.

He's not averse to company on the job, but he's not... exactly chatty.

Sometimes he gets restless and repeats the process around the ADI apartment complex, too. Spot him at night, whether shortly after dinner or in the small hours of the morning, walking at a regular pace around the apartment complex fence, eyes alert but tired. He might be more chatty now-- maybe, a little-- looking over anyone who approaches and nodding in greeting.

II. Keeping or Offering an Edge - ADI headquarters

A lot of his spare time is spent in the target range and training rooms at ADI headquarters. Patrols are easy, but they don't keep you sharp. And he needs to keep sharp, especially as he's found his strength and speed... a little lacking, around here. So he can't depend on it without maintenance. Plus, maintenance helps with the pain from the arm.

So he maintains. Strength exercises, shadowboxing, practicing his aim with guns, flipping and throwing knives.

And if he sees anyone in either room looking lost or clearly struggling, he drifts over. Clasps his hands behind his back and ducks his head. "I can help train," he offers.

III. Exploration - Around town

He doesn't want to be taken by surprise by any path he'll be asked to take for ADI or for a person who needs rescued or killed, or ever be unaware of ambush points, so he does a lot of exploring around town, too. Poking his nose into shops, prowling around suburbs and apartment complexes, and looking up at trees in the park. He doesn't ever sit down in a restaurant or on a bench, but he loiters outside the former and watches the latter like he expects them to bite him, though someone could possibly convince him to try either one.

More than once he gets the cops called on him, because he does most of his wandering around in his full mask and goggles, face comfortably obscured. It helps him feel stronger, for some reason, and it means he doesn't have to deal with making eye contact or controlling his expression. Fellow ADI transplants might find him staring in stony silence at a well-meaning police officer stammering through a warning to stop hanging around residential areas.

Wanna help out?

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"Oh!" She looks over at him in startled surprise. "Well... I think that's what they call the serpent bards. They're sent off to different places, pretending to be kindly players, then they poison the lord's cup. I never met one of them, but I did know a pirate. Sort of. I don't rightly know how true some of her stories were, but with the way she could climb and playfight with a wooden sword, I don't doubt she had some experience.

"She chose her name, you know? Captain Crystal, the sharpest corsair to roam the seas and mountains alike. Do you like being called Winter Soldier? Why not choose something different? What's something you like?"

That is a lot of words. He looks maybe a little bewildered by them all. Unable to really deal with most of them, he falls back on the familiar, the rote. "I do not like or dislike things. It suffices to give civilians something to call me."

Since so far everyone has point-blank refused to call him the Asset or even just the Soldier. Even Yelena.

Mercy tilts her head, brows rising again. "'Course you like and dislike things. You got a tongue in your mouth. Even if ain't nobody ever asked you, you got things you'd rather eat over others, don't you?"

He frowns at her. "No, I do not." Because having preferences isn't allowed, Mercy, come on. He pretty thoroughly represses any desire for one thing over another. (Even if he has started kind of picking the same things every day. It's easier, he tells himself, to not have to think about it. Not preference.)

The angle of Mercy's head is getting to be uncomfortable as she puzzles out the man in front of her. "We should do a test! Sister Sarah used to tell me you gotta test things when they seem unlikely." She turns from the tea and reaches for the cupboard, pulling out lemon cookies and chocolate chip cookies.

"Try both of these. Tell me which one tastes better to you." Mercy sets them down on the counter and pulls out one each, offering them to Bucky in each hand. "Left or right. Just which is better."

This feels like a trap. Pick wrong, and be punished. Pick anything and be punished. He leans back a little from the offered cookies, like they might bite him. Or like Mercy might. "It's not allowed."

This is just confusing. Mercy's brows furrow again. She doesn't press forward with the cookies, but she doesn't draw away, either.

"Who ain't allowing it? That's not a rule here."

"It's just. Not allowed." No, he hasn't found any sign of HYDRA here. But that doesn't mean that seventy years of conditioning are just going to go away. "I'm not like you," he tries. "I'm not a person. It's fine."

Mercy starts to pout her lips. "From where I'm standing, you got all the makings for a person. What makes us different?"

He has no idea what to do with pouting, so he ignores it. "You just. You just are. You have a life. History. Beliefs. Family." He hitches a shoulder, looking away from her and her cookies. "I'm just a weapon. The Asset."

Mercy continues to pout at him, undeterred. "You got a life. You didn't spring full-formed outta your mama's womb, sir. There's some history to you, specially with the skills you got along with the things you're saying. You got powerful convictions if you're that bent on saying you ain't one way when you sure as day seem like it. And folks don't got to have families to be people. I've known more'n one orphan who ain't never met their mama and papa."

"HYDRA made me," he says flatly. "I have twenty hours of memories before my arrival here." He knows, he knows, he's existed longer than that. For a long time, maybe. Longer than any normal human would ever exist. But the memories of that time are gone.

He can't imagine ever having a family. A life. What would he even do with it? He doesn't know how to pick out lunch let alone deal with this. "HYDRA made me," he reiterates, uncompromising.

"Is Hydra the name of your mama?" Now he's just being obstinate. "Maybe you just need some help jogging your memories. Why don't you try both cookies? You can decide from there which you like better. Maybe you'll remember?"

She holds those out again.

"I don't have a Ma," he snaps, then cringes back, like he expects the outburst to be punished.

He actually takes several steps back, then, more intentional, but still wanting more space between him and the idea of mothers. Or HYDRA being anything like a mother. Fuck. "I am here to do a job. Not have memories or. Or cookies or." Memories would get in the way. He's sure enough of that. They got in the way of the last mission in his own world. (Even if he's... kind of glad, for that. Maybe.)

"You got dropped here same as the rest of us, sir," Mercy points out. "Ain't no job you got 'cept the one you decide you want for yourself. I ain't saying it's a bad thing wanting work to keep you, but that was a choice you made as a person. You could've just sat here and let ADI take care of you. But you're out there saving folk who get tangled up with kelpies and the like.

"That's brave and noble."

He stares at her in consternation. Or, well, at her right eyebrow or thereabouts. "There is no cold storage." As if that makes any sense at all, except to him; if he can't be frozen, he has to be working. ADI is just the closest thing to work he knows around here. "And it is what I'm made for. It's not. It's not noble to kill things."

She has no idea what having a cold storage place would do... unless he's some sort of vegetable. "Can be, if you're doing it for the right reasons. I known heroes who slayed villains. Lots of stories end up in someone dying."

"Sometimes it's the smartest choice. Or the best. Doesn't make it noble." You shaped the century, he hears in his head. And I need you to do it one more time. It was a job. It was his job. He'd do it to keep others from doing it, at this point.

He frowns and his eyes skitter away again. "I've done enough of it to know."

"But it can be," Mercy points out. "You saved me. Save a lot of other folk, too, from them kelpies. Even if it was just some sort of mission to you, all of this is voluntary, they keep telling us. You didn't have to step up. You still did, however you look at it, sir."

This is such a stressful conversation. Why do people care? It's his job. "It's what I'm made for. I don't know how to do anything else," he says, maybe a little desperately.

"You know you could learn how to do other things, if you wanted to? I know plenty of warriors who retire, even younger ones. They go on to be masons, bell ringers, bee keepers, all sorts of things. Do you want to be doing what you're doing? If it hurts, then you don't have to."

And there he goes, tipped out of stress and into panic. "It's what I'm for it's what I'm for-- please-- please just let it be," he pleads, breath coming too fast. Begging never helps, but sometimes he can't help it. Begging usually means people hurt him, because he's not supposed to want things and begging is the clearest sign of wanting something.

It's... confusing. Why is he begging? Mercy holds up her hands, brows knitting. This clearly isn't going to be solved today. "Look, w-why don't you just take two cookies? It's my payment for helping me bring things in. I appreciate you helping. You're good at that. That's all."

Poor Mercy. Someday one of them might know why he's such a mess, but right now neither of them really understand it, so it's not like he can even explain. His shoulders hunch deeply, head tucked in like a turtle, but there is no obvious punishment forthcoming, so after a long moment, he finally nods.

He'll take the cookies and flee from the apartment, though. Sorry, Mercy.

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August Catch-all

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