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

[MINGLE] Wendi-go-go to the inn

WHERE: 6I Village and Inn
WHEN: 27-31 July
OPEN TO: ALL - Mingle
NOTES: The Wendigo threatening the village will be killed mid 28 July, with a Blue Lily, per these threads. Plot details here. Note: The final fight is close enough to be seen from the upstairs inn windows.
WARNINGS: Wendigo attack mingle, please warn in comment headers if discussing violence, gore, or related trauma. Possible mentions of character death.

The urgent warnings come from villagers returning south from the lake: a creature twice the size of a man, antlered and voracious. Larger than any they've seen on the plains, stalking its way to the main village. Some might have their own names for this hunger in a skin of shadow; others might remember that it was the first to claim a life, in their village's short history.

Whatever context one has for it, best to secure all pets and loved ones before it arrives. With weapons and food stores at the inn, the call goes out to gather — And to bring back any tools, because there's no telling what doors and windows can do to stop such a creature.

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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."

He does need a fucking bath, doesn't he? He needs a bath, a strong drink, and to sleep for three weeks straight. He needs for this conversation to be over, he needs a hot meal, he needs to go home. He needs a lot of things he's not getting right now.

His lips twitch into something of a self deprecating grimace. When she sums it up that way, he doesn't feel like she does the history justice. Doesn't feel like she puts enough emphasis on his involvement, not enough weight on his shoulders. Her gentle hand on his knee does settle it though, he hadn't even noticed he'd been doing it.

"Something like that," he sighs, exhaling slowly. "They wiped everything I had, I didn't even know my name for..."

Decades, probably.

"They'd put me in stasis, pull me out when they had a target. Wipe my mind when it was over. Repeat. There are code words in my brain, trigger words that if... If I heard them, I just... I couldn't stop myself. I leveled people, innocent people. Tore through them like nothing. I was a monster." And with that, he levels her with a look. Just so she gets that it isn't nameless, faceless, easily dismissed absent bodies, he throws out: "John F. Kennedy."

There's no not staring at that. I falter, mouth working but silent until I finally give up and glance away, closing my eyes with a shaky intake of breath. There's plenty enough to chew on there without JFK thrown into the mix.

"Okay, just—" I begin, faltering again as I open my eyes, staring at the wall across the room. My brain wants to spin out, tractionless, when I look at Bucky right now, and I really need to parse more than just the fact that he was on the god damned grassy knoll.

"I need you to back up a second," I finally settle on, expression pinching, and then snap my attention back to him despite myself. "They put you in stasis? Like frozen?"

Truthfully, I kinda want to be sick, and I don't even know over which part. There are so many delightful options to choose from.

Edited 2018-08-02 09:54 (UTC)

He's not normally forthcoming, not a huge talker, generally happy to sit back and watch. Throw out a few dark jokes along the way, a little sassy banter, but when it comes to the real stuff? Heart to hearts? He's always been as concise as possible, gotten his intentions down with as few words as he could manage. He feels spread out, laid bare. Feels like he's verbally vomited all over, pulled out the biggest pieces of himself and spread them far and wide.

Feels like he's said too damn much, so he answers her question with a simple, frank, "Yeah."

And he does back up, physically, shoulders pulling back, body language angling away from her. He knows distantly, logically, that she meant back up and review some information, but an instinctive part of him takes the order quite literally. The soldier will comply.

I huff out of breath of pure disbelief, and tip forward, elbows on my knees as I press my clasped fingers against my mouth. I can smell the blood under my fingernails.

"That's what they do to us," I quietly say, a faint hitch to my voice. "To zombies, back home. You don't even get a trial, they just... put you on ice until you've done your time or they need you." And when you're of no more use, back in the freezer you go.

I turn my head enough to glance back at him, lips pressed into a thin line. "Don't ever call yourself a monster around me again. I've seen monsters, I know what they look like. You are not a monster."

Chalk that up to another little piece they have in common, he thinks. Hopes she's never had to go through it; he's not sure what the process is like for her, how it feels, but that creeping sensation of ice, of every one of your nerves being shot? The only thing worse was thawing out. Dead limbs prickling back into awareness like a thousand pins.

He'll never like snow again.

Bucky's eyes settle on her in a sort of empty look, a flat and unwavering thing like it's not that he even wants to protest, he knows it's not worth the effort, but regardless - he doesn't believe her. He's not going to buy into it, or try and have this discussion with her. Steve's already put him through it enough. It doesn't matter what they think, to him it's a few simple facts, in the following order:

He broke, he wasn't strong enough to keep it together or simply just die.
As a result, innocent people are dead by his hand.

It doesn't matter if he's technically at fault, all that matters is that it happened. That's it. That's the end of it.

But instead he just shakes his head and drops his eyes, gently diverts the subject. "We think... I went through a... kind of a therapy, there's a chance it's over with. That it can't happen again. I don't know. Haven't had the chance to test it in the real world."

Shuri had said the words in a therapy setting, he'd resisted. Shaking and sweating, but he'd resisted. He'd felt confident, right up until Benedict blasted him with that surge of adrenaline and he'd momentarily lost sight of himself, shaking his foundation a little. He shrugs absently. Now that it's out in the open, they're at least even.

I get it. And maybe if we're going to tally up all our demons, he's got me beat, what with that 70-or-so-year head start on doing awful things. But I still get it, and when I straighten again, I stare at him along moment, resisting the urge to shake him just to get him to give an inch.

Not that I can really talk.

"I shot my boyfriend in the head," I soberly say, and swallow hard against the emotion suddenly crawling up my throat. "I loved him and I knew exactly what I was doing, and I did it."

I never talk about Drake. Ever. And I'm not trying to get into an angst-measuring contest here, but this pulling away, this shuttered look like I don't have any idea of what he might feel like is bullshit. Maybe it's a drop compared to that big ol' sloppy bucket he's carrying around, but it meant something to me, and I'll never be over it.

I drop my gaze and heave a sigh. "I'm sorry, I— Look. This is a lot. All of this. Today, you, me, our apparently painfully tragic backstories." I glance back up to Bucky, suddenly just feeling tired. "If you could maybe not shut me completely out after all of it, I'd appreciate it. I know it's complicated, I get it. But it's out there now." I hesitate a tick, and then add, "And thank you for telling me. For trusting me."

It does, in fact, catch his attention quite efficiently. His eyes flick up, lips press into a long fine line, and he studies her. It's one life, sure, it's small potatoes by comparison, but the importance of that life to her gives it all the more weight. His eyebrows tilt down, lips follow suit, into a kind of understanding sympathy.

Fortunately she spares him of the opportunity to try and come up with some genuine platitudes. He could console her, but her wound is a lot like his arm. It's scarred over, old, missing. Talking about it won't bring it back. He's not sure he has the energy for it anyway.

That in mind there's a little bit of guilty relief running through him at what's clearly a dismissal in her tone. He nods, shoulders sloping down under the heaviness of this entire conversation. She's not asking too much, not that he had any intention of boxing her out after this anyway.

So he simply nods, slow and sure. It's an I won't and a you're welcome at the same time, an acknowledgement that they're wrapping things up here, and that he's on the same page. So he pushes to his feet, good arm wrapped around his ribs.

"I'm gonna go try and... get all this shit off," He mutters, glancing down at the dirt and the blood staining his torso with unhidden disgust. Dirtier language that he normally uses, but his filter's shot all to hell after everything. There isn't a single way in which tonight hasn't been exhausting.

"Okay," I quietly reply with a nod, tracking his movements as he stands. He'll at least feel a little better physically after, which is probably the most either of us could ask for at this point. I feel more than a little emotionally bruised, and I haven't even really begun to process everything that's been said.

"I can check on the ribs for you tomorrow after you've gotten some rest, if you want," I add, and then pause, debating the relative merits of allowing myself to slip completely into the ease and comfort of doctor mode. In the end, I push the impulse aside and give into another one instead.

Standing, I slip my arms gently around him, mindful of his injuries, and press my cheek to his chest with a soft sigh. I'm going to need my own shower after all of this, but whatever. I can't let this end awkwardly, or like the part in the middle didn't happen.

Of all things, it's the hug that does it - shakes him loose that clinical detachment, that emotional distance he'd been putting between himself and everything that happened tonight. She slides her arms around him and settles against him. Comparatively speaking she's a wisp of a thing, slender and small, gentle - you know, when not overtaken by growling and blood-red eyes.

He's almost afraid to touch her, almost afraid of himself. Not an hour ago he'd been slamming his fists into something twice her size, ripping out fur and stabbing into flesh. Not an hour ago he'd been murdering something, and now this is... such a startling juxtaposition that he almost doesn't know how to handle it.

But then he exhales, and his arms come up in turn. They curl around her shoulders, wrap around her entirely with plenty of room to spare. She's a full eight inches shorter, evidently topping out at the perfect height to rest his chin softly on her hair. Of their own accord, his eyes close. His shoulders relax. He settles, still and silent, afraid to break anything about the moment.

He doesn't remember the last time he's had something like this.
The deeply aching pain in his chest is no longer a fractured rib.

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[MINGLE] Wendi-go-go to the inn

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