sixthiterationlogs | mild A:IW spoilers in option a.

Entry tags:

mild A:IW spoilers in option a.

WHO: Bucky Barnes
WHERE: spawn fountain, inn, butcher shop
WHEN: 05/27 & 05/28
OPEN TO: all
WARNINGS: A:IW spoilers in the first section, adult language and potentially traumatic themes referenced.

a. arrival;

It's a jarring transition, a sudden awakening from nothing to drowning in a microscopic instant. It's only through the sheer control he's got over his own body that he doesn't gasp or inhale, his eyes bug out and his limbs flail, kicking upward with the fury of a strong survival instinct. He'd been dust only a moment ago, he thinks. Phantom limb sensations in the wrong arm as they spread like ashes in the breeze, and then darkness. The weight of his arm is like an anchor, pulling him down, aligning with gravity, and it feels heavier than usual despite the fact that water is meant to make people feel weightless.

After a desperate eternity he breaches, heavy metal arm flinging over the coarse edge of the fountain and gripping. Then he gasps, lips parted, hair sopping, floating and breathing and nothing else at first. The water around him stills before he begins phase two, hauling himself over the ledge and onto dry land.

It's an ungraceful roll, his back against the raised edge and a grunt when he falls off of it and onto the pavers below. His hair falls like seaweed around his head, collecting grit and dust from the ground beneath him. His heavy arm lays askew to his left, but he doesn't seem to care. His chest rises and falls, and if he were to be attacked right now he'd be the most vulnerable, easiest target on the planet. He doesn't care about that either, he just breathes, trying to process what feels like two minutes and a lifetime all at once.

b. the inn - later that day;

Several hours and a fair bit of scouting after his arrival, his mind sets a few goals he needs to accomplish for basic survival. secure shelter; gather rations are the orders from a deeply mechanical, deeply russian voice that he now recognizes as fragment of himself from a darker time. It's right this time, so he doesn't alienate it and instead pairs it with a more normal human alternative. He heads for the inn, hoping like hell he can convince them to put him up and feed him for the night. Luckily, it seems like there's a sort of lackadaisical economy here, a sort of socialist provide what you can, we barter, nothing costs money Wakandan style that suits his current predicament.

He settles at a table in the farmost corner, eyes sharp and alert, hair falling on either side of is face like it'll keep him from being recognized by anyone too familiar with the FBI's current wanted posters. Crappy disguise, but wherever this place is, it seems out of touch. It's a gamble, he thinks, and everything about his posture states he's expecting to have to bolt any second. He even startles uncomfortably when someone comes around to take his order. Not exactly the most inviting visage.

c. soap up - the butcher's, day 2;

On the second day, when the ceiling doesn't cave in around him and no federal agents burst in to have him put down like a dog, he starts to settle down. The utilities are worlds away from Wakanda or even his time in Chechnya, but they ring in a nostalgic feeling from Brooklyn a long time ago. Sadly, they're lacking in things like shampoo and basic necessities, so he packs his bag, dons his scrubs, and heads out in search of a rumor he'd heard about soap being stored at the butcher's.

The bell tinkles behind him as he enters, lips parted, curious. It's bizarre, this whole place is, and he's doing his best to take in every piece of it. There's a part of him, too, that feels bad for taking and not giving, but the only thing he has to barter with are the clothes on his back that aren't even his. As such, he does his best to slink silently toward the soap stock in an effort not to be observed taking something he can't afford to replace.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Satellites. Pieces of space station. All sorts of space garbage. They crashed down on Los Angeles. Cut us off from the rest of the world completely. There was a total communications blackout." Caused by vampires, but that didn't need to come into it, at the moment. It wasn't like it had been her fucking plan. "We haven't had contact with the rest of the world in months."

For all they knew, everyone was dead.

Sam would never have admitted as much out loud. But she'd be lying if she said the thought hadn't crossed her mind.

Space garbage sounds right, satellites sound right, but none of that happened LA and he doesn't remember hearing about it going off the grid. Congrats, the subject's enough to completely distract him from his displacement in space and time, and he drops the spoon he'd been holding onto the table with a clatter.

"What? When? After the invasion?" That was years back, though Peggy's from years back, isn't she? "I don't remember hearing about it."

Then again, he'd bounced out to Romania and Ukraine for a couple years.

"At the end of 2013."

Sam, for better or for worse, had an over a year of the multiverse's bullshit. Mostly, she felt angry with herself. She should have known better to hope that she'd find someone else from her world.

She was alone.

She was supposed to be alone.

It was what she deserved.

Sighing, she ran her tongue along her lower lip. "And I hate to ask it but...what invasion?"

The timelines don't add up; nothing he know of in 2013 would have cut off power to the entirety of Los Angeles for months, and if she has to ask what invasion there's no way she was alive on the planet. First contact would be recorded in every history book, everyone knows about it, everyone. Humanity's undeniable, unhidable first conflict with a species not of their solar system, it's not something you can bury your head in the sand to avoid.

Lips purse and, rather than answering the question, he simply shakes his head. "We're not from the same place, are we?"

Benedict, he knows, is from another world. If that's possible, if this place can pull in anyone from anywhere on any plane of existence, it stands to reason it's multiversal too.

"No," Sam said, shrugging her shoulders, like she wanted to be apologetic or something. Really, she was just foolishly disappointed.

Stupid. Fucking stupid.

She dragged a charcoal-stained finger across the top of the table, forming a line. "This is my world," she muttered. She drew another line, intersecting it. "This is yours." And she drew in five more lines, each meeting at the same point. Her fingertip circled the point. "And this is where we are right now. Which only proves how powerful our Overlords really are."

Honestly, the charcoal diagram of the intersecting lines is the clearest and most precise explanation for their current whereabouts that he's received since he's gotten here. His lips part and a gentle understanding spreads across his face.

"I get it." He mutters, reaching a finger out to smudge the edge of the line designated as his. A beat passes, and another understanding settles in on him. The reason for her disappointment. "You're the only one from your line."

The insight startled Sam. Not because it wasn't true. Just because people usually didn't give a damn. Of course, it was entirely possible that Sam was just too hard on people--herself included. But still. She was taken by surprise.

It took a moment to snap her jaded facade back into place.

"Yeah," she said, rubbing her eyelid with her fingertips, smudging a little charcoal across her skin. Like a light dusting of eye shadow. If she'd been going for the smokey-eyed look, she'd have been on track.

A pause.

"So then...I'm guessing, maybe you've run into someone you knew? It's actually pretty normal around here." Except for her, of course. But that kind of went without saying.

"Knew," He agrees with a slight correction. "From about a hundred years ago."

He and Peggy had never been particularly close back home, but the fact that she was from then, from a time when he was still one whole man and not a thousand pieces that don't quite add up to one? That was... it was something. He can't say they know each other now, though given he's apparently been here before maybe she's better acquainted with him than he likes to think about.

He clears his throat, scratches at the back of his head with a hand briefly before nodding to her charcoal smudge. "You got... some-"

Since she wasn't feeling a Predator's Taint coming off of him, Sam supposed that he only meant 'from about a hundred years ago' in the more generic way that people used the phrase. Not literally.

And thank the fuck. She hated the idea of Kindred existing in other worlds. Hers was shitty enough because of them.

She waved off his warning about the charcoal dismissively, while privately cursing herself. Then again, it wasn't like she had anyone to impress.

"So what the hell happened in your line?" she asked, tapping it on the table. "New York got invaded by something? Please don't tell me those morons who paint themselves silver and pretend to be robots finally militarized."

He huffs a laugh, if only because the imagery is comical. Replacing the Chitauri with a bunch of idiots in painted silver suits would have been a whole different news article to read about later on, and the footage on YouTube would have been a riot.

"First contact," he answers grimly, shaking his head. "Hostile. Not exactly silver paint. Nearly destroyed New York. They were stopped, but... It's been one threat after another nonstop after that, some of 'em alien. Some of them domestic."

Some of them him.

Edited 2018-05-29 19:19 (UTC)

"Shit," she said softly.

Astronomy had never held much interest for her. Neither had engineering. But as an avid sci-fi fan, she used to dream about the possibility of first contact. And, honestly, the conclusion was inevitable: Any alien race that made it to earth would have to have technology well ahead of anything humans (or vampires) had created.

It was just a crapshoot of whether they were nice or not.

They couldn't all be Mork from Ork, apparently.

"How'd they get stopped?"

He's never been much of a fan of anything, if he's honest. Pictures weren't exactly on the level that they are now back when he had the time and freedom to peruse media. Mostly they were just an excuse to wrap his arm around a woman for a few hours and take her dancing after; Steve loved them, but they'd never been his thing. After the unfreezing and the freedom he'd earned, he'd still been in hiding. Couldn't exactly open up a Netflix account or pop into a theater, not even in Romania.

He's read a novel or two on the subject, but that's about the extent of it.

"There's this... team. Group of people, people with..." How to put it delicately? "Abilities. A friend of mine lead it. It was rough, but long story short they found the source. Blew it to hell."

Now there was a vaguely uplifting thought. Even in different universes, maybe there was a sliver of goodness that remained a constant. With a wellspring in humanity, of course. Kindred were human once. And some, like Sam, continued to try to be, as much as possible.

And her friends--her friends with abilities--were trying to band together to stop their own threat. It was a heady thought. To consider the possibility that they might even succeed.

No thanks to her, considering she'd been in this clown rodeo for over a year now.

She was never going home.

"Sounds like a pretty awesome friend," she said. "Are abilities...normal? In your world?"

"Kind of. Not exactly." He starts cautiously, and corrects himself the next second. A few dozen out of six billion isn't exactly common, but... "Probably more than we know of exist, but some are... famous. Basically celebrities. Heroes."

He bites out the word not with ire in his voice but with irony, because he thinks the term's inflated. He thinks it washes a complex individual down to just a suit and a gimmick instead of giving them any respect as a human being. Steve's a hero, and that's all the world will ever see him as; not as a man deserving of peace or a vacation every once and a while.

Suits and gimmicks were the first images to flash through Sam's mind. Comic books and superhero movies. Notions that she'd traded away as she came to accept the fact that monsters were real.

"You're lucky," she said quietly. "There aren't any heroes where I come from. Just people who try hard and people who don't bother."

And most didn't bother.

She found herself rubbing her other eyelid. Her smudges didn't exactly match, but it definitely worked with her whole lopsided Goth image. Or what was left of it, anyway. She'd done some careful cutting of her hideous, black scrubs. But wig aside, she didn't really try any more.

"What's it like? Being friends with a hero?"

"Same thing," he responds frankly, because that's the only thing aside from a suit or some powers that made those people heroes. The fact that they try. There others, people on the planet with gifts that choose not to do anything with it, or choose to do the wrong things, or choose to walk a morally gray line where they serve their own best interests and nothing else.

He scratches absently again with metal fingers, pushing his hair back from his face as he contemplates the question.

"I'm not. I'm friends with the guy behind the mask," Is his final answer. "The hero stuff... that's just what he does. He did it before he even had the job. Got the shit beat out of him for it, but he did it."

It was a fine distinction and Sam immediately understood it. Unfortunately, before she could probe further, she caught her first real glimpse of that hand.

And then had to try very, very hard not to stare at it.

She was pretty sure robots didn't grow hair or five o'clock shadows. But she was also pretty sure that was a metal arm.

A metal arm.

It was so astonishingly cool that she had to jam her knuckle between her teeth to keep from blurting out something that would probably fucking embarrass both of them. But she suddenly had a lot of questions.

This was probably the most alive she'd felt in months.

Awkwardly, Sam cleared her throat. "Um, well, I get what you mean. Sounds like a quality person."

Well, she's not exactly subtle about it, is she? The knuckle jamming gets her a look, eyebrows arched in amusement and maybe a little exasperation. He doesn't blame her, though, there's a reason he generally wears long sleeves and gloves, but the scrubs he was given didn't exactly meet the criteria.

He's silent for a second, eyeing her up and down, just to really be an asshole and drag out the expense if he's being completely honest with himself. Finally, after a long pause, he says, "Go ahead. What's the question?"

Okay, she knew that look. And probably deserved it. The same as every other instance of it in her life.

Bucky was earning a surprising amount of respect. Especially for a guy named 'Bucky.'

"Uh, do I only get one?" she asked, her eyebrows puckering a little bit. "Because I'm not gonna lie. If I'm seeing what I think I'm seeing, it's officially the coolest thing ever. I mean, ever. And I have a VHS copy of the Space Wars Hanukkah Special that the director tried to buy and burn all copies of."

Congratulations, Sam. You guys have made it a solid thirty minutes into a conversation before he's decided officially that you're a little on the weird side. He has no idea what in the hell Space Wars Hanukkah Special is, but it sounds like maybe the worst picture of all time, and nobody has ever shown this much enthusiasm over a metal arm. Not even himself, and he's the amputee.

He has literally no idea how to respond to that and so she just gets another look, this time more befuddled than anything, and the I don't understand a single word you're saying is implied. Apparently there is no limit to the number of questions she can ask, because he doesn't pop a number out.

Sam chomped down on her lower lip for a second. She was so fucking out of practice with having actual conversations with actual people. She'd never exactly been a social butterfly to begin with, and she certainly hadn't become one trapped in the giant Skinner Box.

Had she been a bit more reflective, she might have realized that she was actually starving for contact of any kind.

But Sam made a habit of pushing those kind of thoughts into a deep corner of her mind, to be forgotten.

"Okay," she said carefully. "So...context. I was training to go into a scientific field before. Well. Life things happened that sort of quashed that." Unlife things. World-ending things. Whatever. "But I still get a total hard-on for science. And I was working with this engineer who developed some of the most sophisticated tech I've ever seen. But nothing compared to..." She raised her chin slightly at his arm. "I mean, I didn't even notice until you did that thing with your hair." She imitated him. "You've got to have, like, a billion points of articulation."

Way to be subtle, Samantha.

How hilarious would it be if he just took the arm off and thumped it down on the table for her. He doesn't even consider it, of course, but her explanation does seem to lessen the amount he'd been judging her there for a second. Lessen and not eradicate, because Space Hanukkah will never be okay. After a moment of deliberation, he extends the arm forward for her to inspect.

"I guess I never really thought about it," He admits, gently shrugging his good shoulder. "I didn't exactly ask for it, either, it was kind of... an involuntary upgrade."

A beat, and before she can even ask adds, "It's a long story."

Look, but don't touch, Samantha. She forced herself to repeat the mantra over and over again in her head before she leaned forward to look at his arm. The craftsmanship would have given even Max a hard-on. And she was pretty sure he was super dead inside. More than your average Kindred. It was beautiful. She'd never seen anything like it before. And it was maybe because of how exquisite and distracting the arm was that she let slip, "Oh, I know all about involuntary upgrades..."

She really shouldn't have said that.

And she would have kicked herself, if she weren't so busy admiring the engineering.

"Tech like this does not exist where I come from. This is gorgeous."

Edited 2018-05-31 13:39 (UTC)

Her accidental commentary on upgrades earns her a scrutinizing gaze, but he knows better than to ask. If she wanted to talk about it she would, and besides, they've both been a little uncomfortable in the last five minutes. Maybe he'll make things awkward some other time. He's not exactly a pushy person.

"Thanks," He says, and if it sounds skeptical it's only because gorgeous is a word that's never been attributed to his arm before. He turns it for her, flexing the fingers unconsciously. Eventually the arm drops, settling it by his side. "Probably wouldn't believe me if I told you it was made right after world war 2."

"No," she agreed, forcing herself to tear her gaze from the arm, back to Bucky's face. "I wouldn't believe you. Although I guess it stands to reason that the World War II in my universe was probably different from yours."

And yet they both had them.

Along with, it seemed, guys who painted themselves silver and pretended to be robots.

Go figure.

"All I know about mine were the stories we heard in Hebrew School." She made a grand gesture, inviting him to share more. If he so desired, that was.

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