sixthiterationlogs | [MINGLE] Wendi-go-go to the inn

"Yeah," I force out, my voice gone rough with the effort. "Small animals mostly. Things we catch anyway." Not that it's been in any way satisfying, but now is definitely not the time to mention that Ravi's got a couple of human brains chilling at home in the fridge.

"I didn't— I don't kill people," I eject, my eyes wide, pleading. "I'm a medical examiner, a coroner. I— Oh god, why am I still talking?" Sighing, I drop my chin, rubbing my hand across my forehead. "I didn't want this, I don't want this. I've lost... so many people in one way or another to this. But it's who I am now and I can't change it."

So she wasn't kidding about the squirrels, then. At least, if she's being honest about it. He's got no real way of knowing other than a lack of deaths spread about the town (Peeta aside, obviously). His eyes seem to drop as he thinks about this, flickering from left to right and then back again.

It's a lot to swallow.

They flicker up at her desperate plea, and it's because of the way she sounds, the way it resonates with his own personal history, that he drops his hand from the doorknob. I don't want this, she says, but it's who I am now and it tugs at his strings. Plays him like a violin.

"I get it," he murmurs finally, hesitantly. His feet find a careful path toward the bed, and he tentatively lowers himself onto it. Scrubs a flesh hand over his mouth, because...

Wow.

This place is fucking insane.

"Does that... happen often?" He asks finally, turning his head to look at her. The incident in the hallway, the red eyes, the growling.

This is the point where he's supposed to walk out. He'd been halfway there, hand on the knob, and I'd already been steeling myself for the inevitability. That he stays, that he settles in stuns me so much that it takes me a moment to answer, staring at him slack-jawed in disbelief.

"No," I manage at last with a quick shake of my head. "Just if I'm in pain, or..." I trail off, clearing my throat. "If I haven't eaten in awhile." And I don't mean pot roast. "I'm sorry you had to find out that way. It's just... It's not exactly easy to fit into casual conversation— Hey, you're cute, did I mention I eat dead people's brains to solve crimes? It doesn't really work."

He's been a fan thus far of the cavalier way she throws out things like you're cute and nice ass or whatever, but this time the sentiment sort of leaves him floundering all the more. How in the hell is he supposed to begin to broach this whole thing? On top of that, how damn ironic is it that the women he's gotten the closest to here are already dead? He's not sure if it's foreshadowing or meant to be because he can't exactly re-kill them on accident. At least, not that he knows of.

He gets why she'd keep it a secret. He's not one of those guys in soaps or sitcoms who get pissed and walk out because why didn't you tell me and something something trust. This isn't something you just come out and say, unless you're Sam apparently. God knows he's got absolutely no room to judge her for wanting to hide her skeletons deep in the closet.

Or her brains, he supposes. Her closet full of squirrel brains.

"Christ almighty," he mutters to himself, threading a metal hand through his hair, pushing it back. Not for the first time he finds himself thinking I was supposed to just be a guy from Brooklynn. The weirdest thing he'd ever banked on seeing was the war. Granted that's long since been blown out of the water sometime around alien invasion, but occasionally reality checks in him so hard he gets sent clean back to his roots.

Another second ticks by, and he thinks he finds his footing again. He levels her with another look, sweeps her skin with a quick glance, checking for burns. For lingering damage from the shock. Falteringly, he asks, "You okay?"

"I'm okay," I reply, the words soft and a little choked, but I manage to keep my chin from trembling more than a handful of seconds. This isn't what I'd expected, not at all. Maybe I should have, but— Well, Major had been a really good guy, too.

"Just a little tingly. Are you okay?" He hadn't answered me before, although I'm definitely not blaming him. That he's exhausted is obvious, but walking and talking are good signs. I can't tell what's beneath the filth, but after everything, maybe he can't either.

"Broken ribs?" I add with a nod to the binding.

It would've been nice, he thinks distantly, to have been able to scrub off the dried and flaking blood that sticks in patches to his bare and exposed shoulders before they started this conversation. They're starting to itch, and frustratingly he can't quite reach to scratch them without aggravating his chest to the point of ridiculous pain. The serum ruined his life, the least it could do was stick around and make up for the bad times that follow it. Typical.

His eyes drop from her and to the floor again, but it's not out of fear this time so much as fatigue. He nods, hair falling in matted pieces along his cheekbones.

"Seems to be the verdict. Didn't exactly get checked out by a professional," it's the faintest trace of a joke aimed at her profession, the tiniest, flattest little thing that suggests they might come around to being okay pretty soon.

As for the state of his ribs, well, Natasha's pretty experienced in field medical. Hard to tell without an x-ray as well, but there isn't much to be done for it regardless.

He should tell her, he thinks. Tell her the truth, that she's not the only monster in the room. He chews the inside of his cheek, but can't seem to segue into it just yet.

Edited 2018-07-29 07:39 (UTC)

"They'll be painful— annoying for awhile," I quickly reply with a little hitch to my voice, reaching up to swipe the tears from my eyes before they can fall. It's such a little thing, that scrap of levity, but my gratitude is overwhelming.

"I can look at them if you want, but I doubt I'd have anything different to tell you." It isn't a difficult diagnosis; he probably knew himself before anybody else gave their opinion. It will, however, be both painful and annoying for a long time. A month or more, maybe.

"You need a bath," I add with the faintest flicker of a sympathetic smile. What he really needs, I think, is that hot springs where we first met, with its warmth and impossible healing powers, but it's a long walk and Bucky looks like he's about to fall over. "I can go draw one for you, if you want?"

The peaches. They help with healing, too. Maybe there's still some down in the pantry.

Absently, his flesh arm curls around the bindings on his chest. It's going to take some getting used to, but she's right, he knew the diagnosis long before Natasha gently prodded at him in the privacy of his room. Knew it shortly after ramming into that tree, probably, but had been so focused on the fight he didn't even feel it until after the beast was dead. The asset does not feel pain. A mantra he'd been made to repeat more than a handful of times over seventy years.

Whole hell of a lot of good it does him now.

"Rather have a prescription for something strong if it's all the same to you, doc," he answers dryly, shifting to look at her again. The curl of a small smile disappears as quickly as it comes when he realizes with a sort of jolt that she's crying. It stops him, cuts him short, because- hell- when's the last time he's seen someone cry?

(Tony Stark, 2016, listening to Maria and Howard die. He can still feel it.)

His lips part again, at something of a loss for how to handle it. Human instinct says to reach out and touch her on the arm, and he starts to except there's a pretty high possibility that he'll just- he dips his hand into his pocket and pulls out a rather crumpled, blood-stained flower.

"Hey, can I-" He starts, then stops himself. Not sure it's the right thing to do, not sure that asking her to take on a few hours of inconvenient static cling is worth the stupid notion he's got rattling around in his Wendigo-addled brain.

Edited 2018-07-29 08:06 (UTC)

The only reason I can recognize the tattered thing in Bucky's upturned palm is because I've had my own experience with the blue lilies. At the time, I'd been horrified at what havoc I'd created, blasting a whole damned tree in half, but now that I've been on the other side of the lightning, I'm thinking the tree was the least of the damage I might have done that day. Ravi had still been all-human, then. I have no idea if he would have survived.

"Can you...?" I gently prompt, brow furrowing. Take a bath without electrocuting himself or someone who turns on the taps downstairs, maybe? A pretty good question, now that I think of it, but somehow I doubt that's what he means.

Which is an altogether different question, one that will eventually put the cherry on top of the shit day he's had so far if it turns out he can't even scrub the blood off of himself tonight.

He seems to falter, though, as he thinks more on what his plan had been. To- what- to press the flower into her palm just so that he could touch her? Let her run the risk of throwing someone into cardiac arrest on accident because for a minute he'd been thinking about maybe- hell, maybe just leaning in for a second and-

He huffs out something soft and self deprecating. Shakes his head a little to dispel the notion, and curls his fingers around the nearly used-up flower again.

"Nah, nothing," he says around a strained smile a little more closely related to a grimace. It's the ribs talking, right? The fatigue.

"It's not nothing," I say, if only because that much is obvious. My head's still spinning, and not just from the physical jolt in the hallway, but I feel like I've missed something here I should have picked up on.

I step closer, falter, and then settle down on the mattress beside him. I shouldn't touch him again, I know that much, even if I'd like to at least wipe some of the blood from his face. But I can sit, at least — Let him know that it's okay, whatever it was he wanted to say.

"Can you what?" I prompt again, canting my head to better look him in the eye.

His thumb presses absently along the petals of the flower, wilting already and starting to fray at the edges. Clearly there's no getting out of it with an easy dodge, and frankly he's never been much of a coward. Eyes flicker over her as she settles in beside him, a safe few inches away. A rueful sort of apologetic smile plays at his lips when her eyes find his, something soft and maybe a bit downcast.

"I wanted to see if I could lay a hand on you without frying your heart out of your chest, but I'm not so sure how these things work," He mutters, flicking his eyes down to the thing laying on his open palm. Are they less dangerous over time? Less potent with a petal instead of the whole damn flower? Not exactly the smartest risk to take for probably an even stupider long-term notion anyway.

That day with the tree, I hadn't even thought about touching someone else, I realize now — I had, in fact, if only to check Owen's pulse. Did intent matter, or had I just gotten lucky? What just happened in the hallway, was it because Bucky was tired and unfocused, or had the effects just worn off for me more quickly?

It doesn't matter. Maybe in the long run, Ravi in a lab doing experiments kind of way it matters, but it doesn't matter now, and I lay my hand over Bucky's without a tick of hesitation, my pulse suddenly hammering in my ears.

Oh god, I am in so much trouble here.

Her fingers press over the petals of what can only technically still be called a flower at this point, and he wraps his hand around hers in turn, an automatic gesture, the pads of his fingertips against the backs of her knuckles. It's probably a terrible idea, he thinks. He knows, actually. There's a good chance they'll walk out of here and accidentally burn holes into the walls, start some kind of fire, maybe electrocute someone on accident.

It's probably also a bad idea that he's sliding his left hand up her arm, her shoulder, her neck, to curl there under her ear. Cold, but with the extreme gentleness that comes with being too keenly aware of how unyielding metal can be. It's supposed to be a comforting gesture, it really is, meant to be empathetic. Meant to show her that he's not all that bothered by the shadow that took her over for a minute, because he's always been better at doing rather than telling, and people don't touch things they're afraid of.

It's probably a really terrible idea to duck in slowly, a hesitant sort of thing that pauses midway through and then resumes again after a heartbeat, to press his lips to hers.

But he does it anyway.

I repeat: I am in so much trouble here.

Not that the thought is more than the most distant notion in the back of my mind, given that this is a man I've been wanting to kiss nearly since I got here. This, though, isn't what I might have imagined after all the snappy back-and-forth, the jokes, the innuendo. It isn't flirtatious, this kiss — It's tentative and gentle, and intimate in a way that makes my heart jolt in my chest.

I reach for him without thinking, lips parting, a hand sliding to the back of his neck. He's still covered in the worst sort of stuff, but I absolutely don't care. Somewhere, Ravi is having a spontaneous nervous breakdown and doesn't know why, but I don't care about that, either.

Trouble, with a capital T.

Her heart isn't the only one that jolts, and they'd better hope it doesn't have anything to do with the sparks that intermittently seem to flutter off of their skin. It's the furthest thing from his perception at the moment, replaced entirely with the feeling of fingertips and of parting lips. He can feel himself sink into them with a gentle tilt to his head, the slightest off-center angle.

It's a slow and unhurried kiss, because though Barnes is prone to firing off stupid sarcastic comments he's even more prone to sudden and unexpected bouts of seriousness and intensity. The kiss is like a contemplation, like the slowing down of the world around them so he can feel the subtle shift, the tiny movements, the gentle dry catch of skin, things that would get lost otherwise. Everything else disappears but that, but sparks that have nothing to do with the flower, but the tightness in his chest that has nothing to do with the bandages.

He kisses like he's experiencing it for the first time all over again, because he is.

It seems to last forever, but in reality it can't be more than a handful of heartbeats. He pulls away just as slowly as he'd entered, studying her lips and then her eyes with a look that lacks the shyness a normal person probably ought to have after something like that. Unfortunately for the both of them he lacks the social grace to be ashamed or insecure about it, even as he licks his lips and swallows softly.

"Sorry," he says, and it's a hushed and quiet murmur. "For- you know."

Almost fucking killing you and then exposing your secret zombie virus and then giving you the temporarily uncontrollable ability to murder anything in a ten foot radius on accident. You know, all that.

"Hmm?" I hum, more than a little kiss-drunk as I lift my eyes to his, slowly blinking. If you'd just been kissed like that, you'd be a little slow on the uptake, too.

"Oh," I finally huff out with a smile. He's still so close, it's distracting. "The love tap in the hallway? I should have told you the safe word. It's rawr."

There's more I need to tell him — Actual important information before this escalates much more — but it's going to have to wait. And for once, the delay isn't about my own emotional fragility, but someone else's.

I reach up and push a bit of matted hair back from Bucky's face, fingers sliding down to curl against his cheek, little pops of electricity lighting off his skin. "Seriously," I quietly begin, watching him. "You okay?"

Not just with me and everything that happened just now, which is plenty on its own, but everything that happened before — Out there in the blood and dirt, dead monster and dead boy at his feet.

It draws from him a breathy laugh, eyes crinkling, head ducking a little but toward the floor rather than her lips this time. Whether it's because she called nearly dying a love tap or because of the entire context around rawr, he couldn't say for sure. Maybe both.

She catches strands of hair, palms pass over the rough of his facial hair, and he tries not to jump at the snap, crackle, pop of tingling volts. They don't hurt, at least. Not after the flower all but destroyed in his hand, but they're unusual. Unexpected. Not exactly new, but the lack of pain that follows them is.

The smile slips from his face at the question.
He's fine, as far as he's concerned he'd go back out and fight it again right now, but...
The biggest thing weighing on him?

"We lost Peeta. He lost too much blood, he's... He didn't make it."

"I know, I—" My voice chokes, and I swallow against a throat that's gone bone dry. I what? I knew about it because I could hear the yelling and gasps and crying downstairs? I knew about it and I sat here, shaken and guilt-ridden, and unable to join everyone else in their mourning?

"I— I'm sorry," I say, my chin wobbling a little again, eyes wrapped in unshed tears. "I'm sorry you had to go through that, and I'm— I tried to go, I wanted to help but—" I swallow again with a faint shake of my head. "They wouldn't let me, because nobody knows. I'm sorry I couldn't save him for you." A tear finally skims down my cheek and I reach to wipe it away with fingers that are bloody now, too. "I don't even know if he would have wanted that. Some people don't. But he'd still be here."

He slips his hand from hers in order to bring it up, to cup her other cheek with something made of flesh and blood. There, with his fingers along her jawline, he ducks to catch her eyes - red rimmed and guilty

"There was nothing you could've done," He insists seriously, states it like it's a fact. "Peeta went out there on his own choice, it's a risk we were all prepared to take. Maybe you would've gotten sliced open instead of him and then - what - turn? Surprise the hell out of all of us, we drop our guard, we're just as bad off as him? There are a hundred different ways this could've played out, if you try and create them all in your head where you're the difference between whether or not he dies you're gonna drive yourself insane."

Just because she can turn into a monster doesn't mean she's qualified to fight them.

He's right, of course, even if none of what he's said makes me feel any better. If anything, it makes me feel worse, because I realize I've done it again, making things about Liv and her Mighty Crusade when Bucky had been the one out there, the one with Peeta when he died.

"I'm sorry," I repeat, and pull in a slow, shuddering breath. "I asked if you were okay and then I made it about me. I wasn't even there, and I—" I reach up, catch my fingers loosely around his wrist where his hand is pressed to my cheek. "Promise me you'll try to take your own advice?"

Truth be told, if he were a better man he might feel that guilt Liv seems afraid of - at least, more than just the rote tricklings of it. What emotions he feels over Peeta's loss are frankly such a small drop in an otherwise enormous bucket that he can't even begin to pretend like it's going to stay with him for long. Really, the fact that it doesn't haunt him somehow haunts him more, he doesn't want to to think that his list of murder-by-proxy has become so high that he's becoming desensitized to it, but that might in fact be the case.

But it had been a war, for all intents and purposes. A battle, and Bucky is used to losing men.

There's something of a tightness to his expression when she touches his hand, something that might almost look cold or distant, maybe robotic, impassive.

Now's as good a time as any; he can't let this go any farther without getting it out there, and if he doesn't go ahead and pull the trigger he might not get the guts to do it later. He doesn't know if they're gonna be anything more than this, still can't see himself letting someone love him, still can't see himself putting someone at risk by climbing into a relationship with him and all of the baggage he brings, but if- if there's a chance that anything's to come, if they go even a step farther, she needs to know what she's getting into.

And besides, it's only fair. She's shown her dark side. They should be on equal ground.

So he pulls back away from her, settles back into his shoulders, wraps that arm absently around his ribs. Swallows, and ducks his head.

"I gotta tell you something," He starts, a low murmur, a resigned sounding segue. "Since we're... dealing with this, I guess there's not gonna be a better time."

His eyes flicker back up again, and pin her with a look. "I lied to you about- what mine meant. The- name, on-"

He gestures vaguely to the device on his metal wrist.

Murderer. His username on the watches is Murderer. It takes me a moment to remember; the conversation had veered away from the original purpose of texting pretty fast that day, and between all the innuendo and banana angst, it had been pretty easy to forget how it started.

Squirrel brains. Nazis.

He's pulled away, back into himself, and I have to remind myself it's got nothing to do with me. My being undead has nothing to do with Bucky, either; it's just how things are. But I would be lying if I said the look in his eyes doesn't have me a little scared about what he's about to tell me.

"Lied about killing Nazis, or lied about that being the extent of it?"

"The latter," He admits; killing nazis definitely happened, he'd technically bear the title regardless, but as Liv had so passionately pointed out - killing in war was not the same thing as killing for the sake of killing. Not that he'd really consider it that either, but... What he'd done was definitely different.

He licks his lips, metal fingers flexing absently, wholly visible without a shirt sleeve or a coat to hide behind. There's an ironic kind of vulnerability here, and he'd laugh darkly at himself at the thought if he weren't so consumed with how to best string words together. He searches for something that somehow meets both the qualifications of 'honest' and 'not horrifying', finds he has a hard time reconciling the two.

"I've killed... probably fifty people over the last seventy years," because that's the brutal truth of the matter. Most of them weren't high priority targets, no, he only had a couple dozen of those. Most of them were bystanders, security detail, witnesses, casualties, collateral damage. He didn't even know their faces. "The nazi part was true, but I- there was a special operation, a mission that I didn't make it back from. I got taken as a prisoner of war.

"They do things to your mind, in there," He murmurs, flitting his eyes to his hands, to the wall, to anywhere but at her. "They have tactics, they have... drugs, and- technology. Brainwashing."

And he pauses there to give her a second to digest it, to see if she plans on walking out like he'd considered doing on her at first. If he seems a little steely, a little distant... it's because he's compartmentalized it all. Detached himself from it, emotionally. He rattles it off like facts, and is only dimly aware of the tightness in his chest, of the way his left leg bounces silently and anxiously.

Well, at least he didn't bury the lede. Sitting here, though, watching him fidget and force out the words, I'm kind of wishing he had. It probably says something about my own coping mechanisms that my mind doesn't instantly leap to the horror of the total, but rather the average: That's 1.4 people per year.

My own isn't all that much lower lately, at least not the way I see it.

I reach a hand out, settle it on his bobbing knee, trying to not be distracted by the state of him. He still needs a bath. Distantly, I can't believe we're having this conversation right now, that any of this is happening right now, but then again, maybe it's the only time it could.

"So you were... manipulated?" I ask, my brow knitting as I watch him. "Brainwashed. Into killing people."

[MINGLE] Wendi-go-go to the inn

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