You remind me of the truth

[killorder]

WHO: (Who is making the post)
WHERE: Around either village
WHEN: The early part of October
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: N/A Will update as needed

---

>Around the Village

After looking at the lists, Jake found a goal for himself. If Cougar has been here, then there's answer to be found. Answers about how this is possible, what happened to them, and where Cougar is now.

Which leads him to exploring the villages to try and find anything he can. It's a determination in a way that he hasn't had before, even if he's only been there a short time. Not outside of a mission. This is different though. If there's a chance that Cougar, or the others, are there, he needs to find them. Or find any trace of their time in this place, and what's happened to them since then.

He quickly gives up on a sleep schedule, seeing no point in keeping one anyway. Perhaps when the weather changes, if it grows dark earlier and cold, maybe then he'll worry about it but until then, he is going to do whatever he can to try and find answers.

Splitting his time between doing what he can for others there in the villages and his own personal mission, he works until he's exhausted, sleeps for a few answers, and starting over again when he wakes up. Harvesting food, setting up snares as best he can figure out, doing what he can for those in the village. And then he's exploring everything. Empty houses. The public places. Anything he can find, just praying he can find answers.

>The Inn

He isn't sure what it is he expects to find, but Cougar's hat is not it. Laying there on a shelf with some tee shirts he had totally been snagging for himself, and next to a pair of jeans that he later finds fit Jake like they were made for him.

He doesn't remember dragging it down from the shelf, of running his fingers along the brim, caressing over the edge inside where it would have rested against Cougar's brow. Not even really aware that he's ended up in the Inn, sitting at a table with a bag at his feet, staring at it and not really seeing anything at all.

>Over Dinner - various nights

Jake can often be found at a table over dinner, Cougar's hat sitting on the table before him and often working in a notebook while he eats. Eventually he is less writing notes that absorbed in reading a book he's found. Anyone coming close though will realize that it's not a book but a journal, handwritten, and perhaps not his own.

Comments

The Inn; 10/05?

[freightcars]

Frankly, it's been sort of a busy week for Bucky. Crass details aside he's been pretty occupied for the last four or five days, and has largely been vacant from the public eye ever since his healing factor kicked back into gear. He finds himself wandering through the place in search of some much-needed hydration and nutrition rather late in the evening coincidentally the night Jake finds an old forgotten symbol of his friend.

Most people are in bed, he thinks. Lack of readily available electricity, internet, and cable television do wonders to sync people up with the sun and generally, people retire shortly after dark in his experience. As such, he's not expecting another soul to be inhabiting the tables of the inn's dining area. He shuffles into the room barefoot and in sleep clothes, hair askew, disheveled and surprised, faltering a few feet in the doorway.

He's not exactly the most emotive guy, but he likes to think he's gotten a little more in touch with his empathy and social awareness since he's been here. What's coming off of Jake isn't exactly candy and rainbows, so he approaches cautiously all the while wondering if he shouldn't get someone better suited for this.

But here he is, and what the hell, he can try, right?

"Nice hat," He says, immediately off to a great fucking start.

[killorder]

It should sit well with him that Cougar's been here, but then there's talk of clones, of deaths others have seen, not to mention talk of torture from this place and it's all swirling in his head while thinking about his teammate. Not his team, not the Losers as a whole, but Cougar.

He's the closest thing to a best friend that Jake has had in his entire life. He's saved Jake's ass more times than he count. He's also the one person that if Jake has to be stuck here, he wants there with him.

Instead he gets teasers to remind me just how alone in this place he is.

Except he's not. Not really. There's a chance to not be alone, and he took one of those chances in tormenting poor Bucky with text speak and then learning a whole lot about things. Maybe it's the military background, but already there's people he he could possibly turn to.

Or look up and see standing there, talking to him.

He blinks, his mind taking a minute to process the words.

"Oh... Thanks. It's not mind. I... I recovered it? I guess that's the word." Pausing, taking a breath and then, because obviously Bucky really wants to have an in depth talk late into the night when he has way better things to be doing. "What do you know about those lists? Anything?"

[freightcars]

Bucky isn't exactly the most emotionally perceptive person in a 22 mile radius, but it doesn't take much to read between the lines here. Recovered it, he says, clinging to it like a stuffed bear right before bringing up the lists, and... yeah, a conclusion or two can be drawn from that. He's seen them, the names of the dead, people who were related to other people here. Everyone on it seemed less than two degrees of separation away from family on that damn thing.

Jake lost somebody before he even got here, and he's finding the pieces left over.

Damn.

Bucky's lips press into a fine line, and he shuffles across the floor, sleep pants swishing around his ankles. He settles into a seat next to Jake rather than across from him, bare shoulder brushing, a soft puff of air passing through his lips as he considers his answer.

"I know they showed up a little while ago and everybody started losing their shit about it," He says carefully, because those are the actual facts. His opinions on it, though... that's a different matter entirely.

[killorder]

"Yeah, I got that too," he admits, nodding as he sits back, huffing a sigh as if he's just realized he's holding his breath. "But everything everyone's talking about are crazy, and I just don't know what to think about it."

Because he had been torn on what he wanted to know. Now that he knows, he has to live with it. Finding the hat though, that made it a lot harder than he might have imagined until he's facing it.

"My tea... my friend, Cougar? He was on it. A couple of times. Name and rank," he says, worrying at his lower lip as if forcing himself to hold back words, to make himself think before he speaks. It's hard for him, and his lip is red from the attempt. "So then I was looking around, and I found that. It's his. I can tell you without a doubt it's his. Looks like it. Everything the same. It even... it smells like him."

Okay, he's likely imagining that, and yes he did sniff it, and yes he gets that's crazy. He just doesn't care right now. He lifts his gaze to Bucky. He hasn't known the man long, but he feels a desire to trust him, so he can't help but to ask.

"What do you think about them? The lists?"

[freightcars]

I don't know what to think about it seems to be the consensus rippling through the village as of late. There's been a litany of reaction in either direction, from existential horror to a startling relief, but he's found that the baseline is nobody really knows. He's on it, Steve's on it, people from his home are on it multiple times. The implication surrounding it...

One of Bucky's eyebrows creeps up and in a little when Jake mentions having been smelling the damn thing, which is. You know. A little weird, but he'll just reserve his judgement and his commentary on that part. Breeze right on by.

Eyes meet, and for a long second Bucky's answer is concentrated silence, until eventually he finds words.

"I think... it doesn't mean anything. There's no way to prove it's real or if just someone fucking with us to study our reaction, and even if it's real, it doesn't change what we're going through now. Your memories make you who you are. That's all that matters." He concludes, definitively and with an underlying darkness at the last.

[killorder]

Jake knows he's letting it all get to him, and he knows why. He knows the dark thoughts in the back of his head and what they stem from. Someone is out to kill them. Someone with the CIA backing them and the means to find them. The last time he saw his team? They were loading themselves into coffins.

Now Cougar's name is on some list and Jake has no idea where he is, but proof he's been in this place. Whatever, wherever the Hell it is. Yeah, it's right under the surface, gnawing at his stability. What little of it he has.

"If it's not real, what about that?" He taps the hat, not being a dick but truly asking. Wanting to hear Bucky's take on this. There's a lot of respect in him for a soldier that has been through all that Bucky has. Besides, it's a listening to your elder thing, right?

Not that Jake is thinking of it that way. Just looking to someone he respects.

[freightcars]

"People come and go without remembering it," He answers neutrally, a sort of shrug to his good shoulder. "When they're here they get gifts, they leave 'em behind, they come back again later without remembering it."

There are things he's found in the store room that could only ever have been Steve's, people here who remember Steve having come and gone before Bucky ever arrived. A hat is much the same, that doesn't prove the existence of clones or that he'd ever died. The lack of concrete evidence is sort of like trying to prove God exists, and Bucky's always been extremely agnostic. Pragmatic, maybe, might be a better word.

Carefully, tentatively, he reaches out to curl a hand around Jake's shoulder. "You can't let it eat at you from the inside out."

[killorder]

"You know what others are saying, right?" People talk, and they're not trying to be private about it, and Jake hasn't much to do but listen. "And I'm not saying I believe it all. I really don't. I just..."

He just wanted him there. He just wanted to not be alone in this, with his unit, where he's supposed to be. Instead he's here, and he deserted them, no matter what he's told. It still feels that way.

"Oh trust me. I totally can," he says with a snort. "I'm good at it. I just normally don't let anyone know," he admits, giving Bucky a crooked smile. "I just... I miss him, you know?"

[freightcars]

"I do," He answers, lips in a tight line. He's heard the murmurings, the breakdowns, he thinks he's heard that Sam took a pipe to a tree in all her fury. He doesn't believe it, though, at least not with the same conviction as everyone else. He can't offer much by way of consolation, he's not a particularly eloquent individual and he doesn't lathe empathy the way some caring people do.

All he can really do is offer another gentle squeeze like a reminder that he's here.

"I get it. I was here maybe... a month before Steve showed up, people kept talking about how I'd just missed him... Sucked, for a while. The people here, though... they help. If there's one thing this place has, it's compassion." He says it with a soft exhale like a sigh, almost fond, mostly tired. "People willing to fill in the gaps. It's not the same, but you're not alone."

Around the Village

[our_promise]

Natalia is wandering through the edges of the woods, trying to familiarize herself enough with the area that she won't get lost, when she happens upon Jake's snare project.

"Hello," she calls out before watching with great interest.

"Is that very difficult to learn?"

[killorder]

Jake looks up from where he kneels, working on setting up the twine he found and setting it to a sapling and branch that, as he remembers, will set a trap to catch living things. Including people, though it's not what he's aiming for.

Glancing up, he offers a smile. "Not really? I had a teammate teach me when we were in the jungles of Bolivia. Only caught some possums, that are way cuter than the possums I ever knew, but figured they couldn't hurt here. Never much had to fend for my own food, so trying to learn.

"I can show you."

[our_promise]

She smiles brightly at the offer.

"I would appreciate it, if it isn't too much trouble. I'm trying to learn some survival skills."

[killorder]

"Naw, no trouble at all. I promise no results," he says, grinning as he shifts to one side to make it easier to see what it is he's doing.

"Mostly you're just going to let the sapling do the work, and then it will hopefully keep whatever it catches off the ground so that it can't escape. Not sure with the weird creatures they have here, but have to try, right?"

[our_promise]

“I know there are some normal animals too,” she assures him as she bends to get a closer look. “The stew that’s most often made is rabbit.”

[killorder]

He chuckles at that, nodding. "So I've seen, yeah. Everyone seems so cool about it, and I know I haven't been here long but... they're weird, you know?" He shakes his head. "Like there's this one that's like a dinosaur but it acts all friendly, and those horse unicorn deer things and... I just don't know," he says, laughing at himself.

[our_promise]

Natalia chuckles in understanding.

"Everything about this place seems weird to me. The animals, the clothes... I'm even told the lights that work run on something called 'electricity' instead of fonons."

[killorder]

Working to secure the bit of twine with a makeshift pin made out of two sticks crossed, Jake pauses to look at her.

"I admit, I know of it as electricity, though I would wonder if you're used to lights that aren't candles, maybe it's the same thing? Just what different people call it something else?"

He's not sure, though she has his full attention now.

"You're not the only one though who comes from a world different than some of the others seem to though. At least there's that?" He's trying to help, even if he's not sure how really.

Empty Houses

[cannily]

Cael has lived in close quarters before: squatter's dens, cheap hostels, quarters attached to the theater. It's a change, to go back to sharing a space with so many people, but of the changes he's suffered in the last cycle of the moon--the least difficult to navigate.

But that single bathroom.

There are some things one gets used to not having to deal with, and will not go back to. If he had to, he'd hike to the spring every day, but the empty houses still run water, and it's only a matter of carrying a bit of wood from the inn to heat it. He could simply take the place for himself, but--of all the ways he's lived, he's never lived alone. He's never kept a house, and with Winter easing down from the mountains, it hardly seems smart.

So: enough of a fire to heat a single bath, a good soak, and let the ghosts of this place have the rest. He's sitting upright with his back bent, head down in the water, soaking up the silence--when the silence breaks. The sounds are muffled, a little tinny in the water, but someone or something is walking around the house.

He gets up slowly, head bent to keep his hair in the water for as long as possible. Slide it over the edge, water drips quietly to floor instead of splashing into more water. When he grabs the towel, it's only to wring some of that water free, and to retrieve the throwing knife on its leather cord. Padding carefully toward the door, he eases it on the old hinge, peeking into the short hall, looking and listening for the intruder.

[killorder]

The likelihood is that anything that has been left behind is likely already been scavenged but having something to keep himself busy means that maybe Jake stops thinking about all he's left behind and how dangerous that can be for everyone involved.

Not thinking, obviously, about how dangerous this could be for everyone involved. Namely, himself.

He's not even trying to hide that he's there, though the neon green shirt he's wearing wouldn't help if he actually was trying to be sneaky. It is definitely clear in the light there is as he comes out of one bedroom, pausing to considering where else to look.

"If I was a Cougar, where would I be," he murmurs to himself, as if his teammate is hiding in the village. Which he doesn't believe. Just maybe his things.

[cannily]

It's such an unnatural shade as to make him squint, the brightness jarring in the rustic home. But with the forthright gait of the man wearing it, and the absentminded murmur preceding, he sighs, opening the door with a squeak and leaning far enough out to show his face and hang of damp hair.

"I really thought this one was empty," he says, less apologetic than might be deserved--he's trying to reorient his idea toward negligent owner, going by the dust and empty furnace. "Just--give me a moment."

He looks back in at the full tub and folded clothes, then back out. "You're not looking for anything in here, are you?"

[killorder]

Jake startles at the sound of a voice, spinning around suddenly, hands going up immediately. "I... Uhmmm... Wait, it is. I mean, it was. I don't live here," he says, wincing because that just sounds so bad.

"You're fine and no, I'm not, I mean, I doubt there'd be anything in there. I just... A friend was on that list in the bunker and I'm trying to find any sign of him here," he admits, blurting the words out. "I figure most things have been gathered, but I couldn't help but to try and look, see if there's any sign of him. Sorry. I'm out. So going," he says, backing up a step, hands still up. "Totally didn't mean to invade."

[cannily]

He'd put the lists so squarely out of his mind, once he parsed the name he knew upon them--of course it could have been a friend. Some people have those, to harbor, to miss. He hadn't hated Indira, in the years preceding her hands around his throat.

He'd still planned to burn her life down as collateral damage, but they'd been civil.

"Have you checked the records," he asks, picking up the end of one question now that the other has been answered: not a homeowner, and not posing a threat. Rather than shut himself in, he wanders back from the cracked door, picking up the towel and wringing out his hair again, voice echoing on tile and carrying out to the hall. "They might have a note on which house was his. I found an odd little map in a place behind the inn."

[killorder]

For Jake it is personal, and more so than he cares to admit, and he's still trying to make sense of it all in his head. Or ignoring it all by going off on wild goose chases to keep himself busy so that he doesn't have time to stop and think.

He stops at that, swallowing hard as he waggles a hand back and forth, staring at the wall and then the floor as he realizes he's invaded on someone in the bath. "I started to. Then I found a journal that mentioned him, and I've kind of been out looking around since," he admits. Not why that got to him so much, or that he has kept reading the personal diary as well.

He looks up then, and then suddenly down. "A map though? I admit, I hadn't thought someone might keep track of things like like."

[cannily]

"The records say there was a canyon before, I think it's from that time, but the houses are the same." His voice comes in and out, muffled by the towel, grit through the balancing act of tugging on the odd hose from the store room.

The best he can do, in preserving his proper clothing, is to let the black tunic match everything, but he's at least covered when he leans into the door, yanking his remaining boot up his calf.

He pushes the weight of his wet hair back as he stands fully, knife settling on its tether under his shirt, towel hanging from one hand. "It was a bit faded, one of a set it looked like. I have it back at the Inn, but I might remember which house it was if you tell me his name?"

[killorder]

"Wait, what happened to the canyon?" Even with the computer, the things he's seen there, and none of it made him think about a time great enough to change the landscape. Though if they could make the rest of this happen, what else were they capable of?

Jake continues to talk though, his voice changing as he looks around, not moving away since they're talking but giving them space to get dressed.

He turns then though as the voice is a bit clearer, out of the room. He considers that, nodding because it's only then he realizes he hasn't used his name. "Carlos Alvarez. Cougar."