apocalypsehowcomm | Log: Losing count

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Log: Losing count

Who: Steve Rogers and you!
When: Throughout April
Where: During the Leviathan mission, the gym, Alden Pond Burial Ground, ADI/apartments
Summary: Steve goes on the Leviathan mission and follows it up by wearing himself out at the gym. He later investigates the Alden Pond Burial Ground and has some unsettling visions. Feel free to happen upon him at any point!
Warnings: Visions of death, suicidal ideation

Steve volunteers for the Leviathan mission, because of course he does. He's big and strong (mostly; the dizziness and achey joints from using Mjolnir most recently seems to have worn off) and he's on Security. He really ought to go.

And for the most part, the mission goes fine. Better than expected, in some ways — it's not a giant, hulking monster the size of a city block, though it is a very big lobster.

But the thing is… Steve of course has to think about it. Has to be weirdly impressed by the size of the thing. By how it's survived. And even by the way these people have deluded themselves.

He's no stranger to feeling small and insignificant. But it stirs something inside him that's already been roiling after recent events, and he spends the next afternoon and evening in the gym, going at the heavy bag like it's insulted his mother. Except the longer he goes, the more (naturally) tired he gets. The slower and less coordinated his punches become, the angrier and more frustrated he feels. Sometimes it feels like frustration is such a big part of him, these days. He spends far longer than he should at the bag, giving anyone who looks like they might even want a turn a flat glare that says Don't even try it. The few — very few — times he pauses for a drink of water and someone might head in the bag's direction, he snaps, "Hey. I'm using that."

He finally shuffles back into the apartments minutes before curfew takes effect. He's sweaty and dragging and unhappy, and keeps his head down in the hallways. His hands are red, the white electrical burn scars spiderwebbed over them standing out angrily against the skin. He might quite literally bump into someone if he's not careful.

Despite the lingering feelings of physical inadequacy, Steve is, naturally, curious about anything graveyard related these days. After the bread in October and then the fire two months ago, he's maybe seeing connections that aren't there… or is he? It feels like it's worth following up.

So, sometime in early April, after the lobster-related smash-and-grab, he catches the bus to the park. Alone, because he's still bad at requesting backup, and he honestly isn't sure he's going to find — or see — anything, anyway.

But he does. And while he doesn't think there's anyone on the stairs with him at the time, there certainly might be.

He's quiet on the bus ride home. And through the next day. And the next. So that's what he'd given up and then decided to chase, before he ended up here and everything changed.

Well. The best way to stop thinking about things he doesn't want to think about is to keep busy. And those stairs still need investigating.

So he goes back to the burial ground. Back to the stairs. And a few days later, he does it again. Then, again. It's like he can't get enough of seeking out what it might or might not show him. He might miss a few days of work, or skip out early, or not show up when he said he might meet someone somewhere. He might be a little obsessed.

He can't always make sense of what he sees. Usually it's a battle with someone or something he doesn't know. Once, he's the monster, an angry, raging thing almost like the Hulk used to be, tearing Gloucester apart until people like Winter, like Yelena, take him down. Once, he's an old man dying in his bed.

He frankly isn't sure which of those last two bothers him more. Or how many steps he counted that day, dammit. They're all starting to blur together.

He even gets knocked down once or twice. Those days, he doesn't approach the steps; on one occasion, he ends up sneaking back toward the apartment with a very impressive shiner forming around his left eye.

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"Okay," Winter says readily, after shedding his tac vest and a couple of his knives, swapping them for a hoodie and the brownie. He still has a couple knives on him, but they're not his work-knives. They can just go home, after this, he thinks. Not give Steve the temptation of more time to punch things.

He offers Steve his free hand again, for the walk out. "There's a bunch of birds in the courtyard. Not-scary birds who don't stare at you. Their singing is nice."

The gesture is simple, but it's also touching. It soothes some raw part of Steve that's been getting rawer all day, the more he's whaled on the bag. It also tells him that this is the right move; a big part of him wants to wallow, wants to lash out, but he's still slowly recognizing that he... shouldn't.

Not anymore. Not today, at least.

"Okay," he agrees. Well, and also: "I'm glad the other ones are gone. Feels like the whole damn world is out to get us sometimes." Sometimes, it feels like there's no escape. But right now, it feels like Winter's showing him a way out, even if it might only be temporary.

He trails alongside Winter, and adds, "You're good. At talking people down. Or - at least me." That's always been true, even if Winter doesn't remember.

Winter shoots him a clearly skeptical look, though he keeps that hand, holding as tightly as he can get away with, without hurting. "I think you're the only person I've ever tried to talk down." He pauses. "I argued with one guy once, but I don't think I changed his mind. ... He's gone now."

"Even if I'm the only person - this isn't the only time. You, uh. You know me."

Which sounds - well, it doesn't come out the first time Steve had said it to this man, desperate and pleading. It's just... the truth. It always has been. "I think you might be the only person left who does."

That's a little alarming, given: "Steve. I hardly remember anything from before HYDRA." Hell, he only remembers pieces of HYDRA itself. If he is what Steve's got, then-- he feels really bad for Steve.

Steve shrugs one shoulder. "I know," he says, because he does. He can accept that, but even so, "It doesn't mean there aren't still parts of you that are the same. That are you, no matter what you remember, or who you are now."

Maybe that isn't the best thing to say, but it's true, all the same.

Winter chews on that for a minute, right up until he pushes open the door out of the building. He finally asks, somewhere between curious and a little worried-sounding, "What's the same? Between then and now."

"Well, your unerring ability to take care of me when I least want it," is the immediate, and maybe easiest, answer.

Although, really, that's part of the bigger: "Your heart. The way you care about people. The way you're curious about things and you do things even when they scare you."

Steve shrugs a little, again. "It's hard to put everything into words. But I can see it. Who you are is... still who you are, even though yeah, you're different. That's okay. People change." How can they not, after being through hell?

Well - that brings out one more thing. "You came out the other side. You're... strong."

Some of that is hard to argue with. He does do things that scare him, a lot, but he still does them because he has. He does care about people and he is curious about things. The fact that those were all traits of the... person Steve knew before HYDRA is-- strange. A little disturbing. He wants to be himself. He thought he'd worked hard at building himself, but it sounds like he built himself into someone else. Is that self being like someone he doesn't remember a good thing? Or a bad thing?

"What's different, then?" he asks finally, crossing the courtyard towards the bit of lawn and bench outside the building.

Steve maybe should've seen that question coming. He's quiet as Winter leads the way to the bench; it feels better outside. Less cloying. Less claustrophobic. Easier to leave the anger behind. A little.

"You're - I don't want to say braver," he starts, carefully. "You were always brave. But it's different now. A different type of bravery, I guess. You, uh. You told me how you felt," he adds, feeling a little awkward, a little embarrassed. "I don't know if you would've done that before." Steve had clearly been too chicken to do it first, and - they'd never have gotten to what they have now.

"You've lost a lot," he adds, fingers tightening around Winter's. "You've reinvented yourself. But even though the bones are the same. You're a new person. I don't know if I can describe it better than that. You are Bucky, but you're not. You're Winter. You took what was left of him, and you kept going."

It's - hard, actually, for him to say that. Like watching Bucky fall, all over again. Like willingly giving him up. Steve's voice is admittedly a little hoarse, and he's looking at the horizon. But he's also proud, to know this new person, who isn't Bucky but also is, and he doesn't think he really has the words to explain the delineation, because it's both clear as day and fuzzy as hell.

"You're not the ghost of my dead best friend," he finally gets out, voice so quiet it's mostly a whisper. "You're just you. I don't think I woulda ever let myself love him, but it's - I love you."

It may have been hard, but it was also pretty much exactly the right thing to say. Winter sits, staring at his knees, at the brownie sitting on one of them, and a little at their hands, curled together tightly on the bench between them just on the edge of his field of vision, and makes an actual effort this time not to cry. He's only moderately successful.

He's just himself. Not somebody else. And Steve said that. Not Yelena, who is fierce about his independence, or Kate, who never knew any other version of him, or Strange or Wanda who never stopped seeing the person they wanted to see. Steve said it. Maybe Steve really, really isn't comparing him to some long lost person. Winter hadn't really thought he had been... not often, anyway. He mostly didn't think about it at all, when he could get away with that. Winter is very good at not thinking about things he doesn't want to.

But the thought had still been there. Now and then. Like a moment ago, hovering around the fear of not being himself...

He swipes at his eyes with the back of his free hand. It's metal, so it's not as effective until he pulls his sleeve down a little and does it again. "Okay," he says then. "Okay, good. I'm just me. And I love you, too." Maybe not the same way that Bucky person did, but in his own way. And that's important. Steve is his, not some dead person who left Winter his bones and snatches of feelings and nothing else.

Steve feels this tug in his chest when Winter goes to wipe at his face with his hand - and then his sleeve. A tug that turns into something bigger, all-encompassing, when Winter actually says he loves Steve, too. Not that Steve had said it to hear it back - absolutely not - but there is something about hearing it that hits like something physical, only in a really, really good way.

Actually, it's not so much a hit as a pull, like a magnet. "I'm gonna move a little closer," he says, waiting a beat before he does, scooting closer on the bench and pressing his shoulder up against Winter's. Just leaning a little, and maybe hoping Winter will lean back.

"You're a really good you," he adds, maybe to lighten the moment just a little, but also? He means it, dumb as it sounds.

Winter does him one better: he shifts so he can put his head down on Steve's shoulder. This is okay. It's actually... good. Steve is safe. Steve is his.

He stays there for a minute before, maybe in answer to Steve's comment or maybe just because he isn't sure how to respond with words, he unwinds his fingers from Steve's, unwraps the brownie from its seran wrap, and breaks it in half. The slightly bigger half he holds up for Steve, without lifting his head.

Steve makes a sound that is definitely a snort - but a fond, slightly damp one. He tilts his head so it knocks, very gently, against the top of Winter's.

"And you always give me the bigger half," he says; but just this once, he doesn't protest. He takes the half he's offered with his free hand, and takes a bite. "Next brownie's on me," he adds, his mouth only a little full.

Because there will be another. A lot more, really, he hopes.

"Okay," Winter says quietly. He'll accept that. He wants there to be a lot more brownies, too, shared between them.

And he thinks he might be done with words and emotions today. It's been a busy one, just this past hour. So he settles his head easier on Steve's shoulder and eats his brownie in hopefully companionable silence.

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Log: Losing count

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and NOW wrap this one? :3 glad we didn't before!!