sixthiterationlogs | left from my dreaming was a feeling of unnameable dread [NOW CLOSED]

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left from my dreaming was a feeling of unnameable dread [NOW CLOSED]

WHO: Bucky Barnes
WHERE: The Inn, Around the Village & Outskirts
WHEN: ~~Mision Report:~~ December 16th
OPEN TO: OTA
WARNINGS: Nothing yet.
STATUS: Closed to new threads

i) inn
For now, Bucky lives at the inn. And, with the weather being as it is, it's also where he spends much of his time. He helps out where he can, wherever Kate will let him, and when he's not, he's practicing the little, essential skills that he's had to re-learn to accommodate his condition. At least tying his boots isn't a frustrating ordeal anymore. He can manage pretty quickly.

Right now, he's downstairs, by the fireplace, trying to tie slip knots and snares one-handed, using his shoelace for practice. The problem? There's a cat who just loves to pounce on the shoelace. Or attack Bucky's ankle. Or flop on top of any surface he's trying to use.

It's really tough to get much done with a cute little tailless tabby distracting him. And, if you walk in at just the right moment, you might see the former assassin smiling and playing with Miss Hoppity.

ii) around the village
To say that Bucky's been feeling frustrated with his role in the village is a definite understatement. For all that he hates what HYDRA did to him, it's been a part of him for so long. The metal arm, the strength, the durability, they were all included in his definition of normal. With the absence of his robot arm and the dampening of his abilities, he's been feeling off-balance. Rudderless.

It's not a new feeling, if he's being honest. The question of what kind of life he'd ever be able to make for himself has been hanging over his head ever since he broke free from HYDRA's conditioning. What can an assassin who no longer wants to kill even do? But at least back home, living off the grid, he still had his strength and both of his arms. Made it easy to get by with jobs that paid under the table. He quickly learned how fulfilling it was to do good, hard work that amounted to something more than a trail of grief and broken, lifeless bodies. Work with his hands, mostly.

The problem being that now? He's only got one. And it's making it tough to figure out what he can do without feeling like a burden. So, when the weather permits, he likes to leave the inn and check out the rest of the village, see if he can lend a hand (don't laugh) to anyone, try to find some niche he can fill and really be an asset to the village.

'Asset.' Poor choice of words.

iii) beyond the village
At first, Bucky didn't venture out of the village as a rule. He wasn't assured enough in his ability to deal with the threats the wilderness might pose to go on any expeditions or hunting trips. He's still not, really. But, over time, he's started to test the waters a little. Always during the day, always following the river, and never going too far from the village. He's not sure what he's after with these little trips. Mostly, he just wants to see the area for himself, get a better feel for it.

It's always possible he'll run into somebody else along the way.

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Riza tried to make a point of not being a hermit most days. It was harder in the colder weather when all she wanted to do was bundle down into her blankets and ignore the problems this place brought with it. The hunting trip had made her feel more alive than she had in awhile, probably because they had actually been out accomplishing something useful. It wasn't that she didn't try to make herself useful here, it was just more difficult sometimes to see the immediate results or the bigger picture.

That being said, she had been gone for a long time and felt like since they were all mostly stuck in the inn anyway it was best to start learning more about the people she was living with. She at least knew most names and faces, even those that had moved in while she'd been gone for those two weeks, but if she really wanted to get to know the others she was going to have to stop being so reclusive. Riza made her way downstairs to see who was around and to see what was going on.

As usual, the downstairs area was warm thanks to a well-stocked fire place. Riza looked around at the mostly empty inn before her eyes fell on a man sitting by the fire place. Bucky, if she remembered correctly, and he was either tying knots for hunting or playing with the cat. Honestly it was hard to tell since he appeared to be moving his foot purposefully for the cat to chase the shoestrings while he looped a knot around his fingers; his amusement was apparent even from where she stood.

She'd never been much of a cat person, but watching the man playing with the cat made her homesick for her dog all the same. She could easily picture sitting at her table cleaning a gun while Black Hayate sat at her feet. After awhile those brown eyes and a soft whine would force her hand and she'd set the gun aside, pick up a small rubber ball, and toss it into the next room. Black Hayate would pounce after it, giving Riza enough time to reassemble the gun and turn her full attention to her pet. Other times, if she was really needing to work instead of play, she would place a bowl of food to distract the dog long enough to get her work done. Although even then, nine times out of ten, Riza would still be distracted and stand with her arms crossed watching her best friend scarf down a bowl of food.

She hated how these things always seemed to hit her at the worst time. Luckily, Riza was pretty good at keeping her composure. Homesickness was nothing new. She sighed and crossed over to the fireplace, "If you really need to get that done you might do better to distract her with food as opposed to your boot laces."

Even though he's playing with the cat in a rare moment of total adorableness, Bucky's still alert enough to notice when somebody else joins him in the sitting room, even before Riza says anything to make her presence known. There's a slight shift in his body language, his back and shoulders stiffening just a little, but he seems to keep his attention on Miss Hoppity until Riza joins them by the fireplace.

He stops dangling the shoelace, giving the little cat a chance to catch it in her paws and feel accomplished as the fierce hunter she undoubtedly is.

"Yeah..." he concedes, offering Riza a slight smile in greeting. He doesn't know her all that well-- really, that can be said about him and nearly every prisoner in this village-- but ever since the hunting expedition returned several days ago, he's seen her around the inn quite a bit. Familiar enough to exchange words, but not so much that they really know all that much about each other. "But I'm kind of enjoying the distraction."

"Pets are good for that. I'd prefer a dog myself, but I suppose cats have their appeal," she replied. She was watching the cat more so than the man now, Miss Hoppity was a familiar creature around the inn after all and even Riza had developed a soft spot for this cat.

As the cat rolled on her back, gnawing fiercely on the shoestring to make sure it was dead, Riza turned her attention to the man, "I might have another distraction for you." She thought about asking him what he needed to be distracted from, but he struck her as the type to not talk about that kind of thing with a near stranger. She continued, "I noticed you were working on making snares. I've been trying to learn some new skills lately since my normal skill set isn't really helpful here without the right tools. Would you be willing to show me how to set some up?"

Bucky lets out a soft murmur in agreement, having never really considered himself a cat person, either. Dogs, though, he remembers having an affinity for back in the day. The overt affection and loyalty, the playfulness... How could he not love them? He used to see himself adopting some kind of mutt after the war. Obviously, it never worked out like that.

These days, cats have won him over... Even if he had been attacked by a man dressed as one right before he came to in the fountain here. There's still a little part of him that wonders if getting kicked around by the Black Panther somehow left him vulnerable enough to be taken. But that's not what he's focused on right now.

Crooking and wiggling his fingers at the cat to try to win back her attention, Bucky looks at Riza, his brow creased in bemusement. Maybe it's a byproduct of feeling aimless and not particularly useful with his arm missing, but it throws him for a little bit of a loop to find that someone actually wants him to teach something. Not that he's complaining. It's more of a pleasant surprise than anything.

"Yeah. They're pretty easy to get the hang of." Especially when you've got both of your hands. It's a brief, bitter thought, and he pushes it aside quickly. "What's your normal skill set?"

"I'm a soldier, a lieutenant. Back home I served as a sniper during the Ishvalan Conflict, but I'm in general fairly skilled with firearms." She said, knowing that some of it might not mean much to him. Different worlds meant talking about Ishval usually resulted in a blank stare and even terms like 'lieutenant' or 'sniper' might not hold meaning if there was no military or firearms to speak of. So, if he asked about any of it she'd be willing to explain or, if not, that was fine as well.

But, as she had said, there wasn't a lot of use for a sniper here, especially without a gun. She wanted to be of more use and learning how to make a snare seemed like a start.

Far from giving her a blank stare, Bucky instead nods in acknowledgment. Of course he'd understand, because her background isn't too dissimilar from his own. The only thing he's unfamiliar with is the "Ishvalan Conflict," but he's a little more used to hearing about unfamiliar places and events now.

It helps that, for a long time, he didn't even know his own history. Feeling like he's missing some information isn't anything new to him.

"Me too," he admits, tugging the shoelace free from the cat, who takes a little swipe at his hand for his insolence. Bucky sits up straighter and sets the shoelace down on the table, straightening it out. "Sergeant," he explains, with a quick gesture to himself, though it's not a title he holds anymore. "I was my unit's sniper."

"There certainly seem to be a number of us here," she mused aloud, thinking of the various soldiers, former military, and even other snipers she'd met. It wasn't a crazy amount, by any means, but it was certainly enough to comment on. He certainly doesn't seem surprised by it, but then again, he strikes her as the kind of person who isn't phased by a lot of things.

"Are snares something you picked up then? During your service I mean?" It hadn't really been necessary for her work, but she understood that there were different terrains and expectations of battle for everyone.

While Peggy has said that she's going to take someone with her if she ever goes out to search the village, she doesn't think that taking long walks qualifies as needing backup. True, it's something that's potentially contentious, but right now, she's just bundled up as best as she can, having taken the time to set her hair and her lips as though it's any day back in the war (the grace of which has been contributed through several of the boxed gifts here) and is keeping her ears cold by ducking down into the collar of her coat.

Mostly, she's keeping a weather eye out for anything suspicious that might become a lead. What isn't a lead, but could potentially be suspicious, is when she comes across Bucky on her walk, meeting him at a point along the river. "Well, it's certainly a good place for a clandestine meeting, but I don't recall sending out invitations," is her dry, even jest.

Bucky isn't surprised to come across another person while he's out exploring the 'prison' they've found themselves in. That it's Peggy, though, is a little unexpected (though, really, he's not sure why he considers it such). But at least she's somebody he knows, so his lips quirk in a wry smile at her remark.

"If I always waited for invitations, I'd hardly ever get out," he points out, with some humor in his voice.

"Plus, I don't actually think this village is quite up to date on social mores," she says. "Though strictly speaking, if we are in a date several decades ahead, then I think I'm likely missing out on several trends and new social rules that have simply passed me by," she shares, gesturing to the path ahead of them. "Do you mind if I join you on these explorations?"

She knows she's supposed to go with someone, so she thinks that this rather follows the promises that she's made so long as you ignore the part where she'd found her way out here utterly alone.

"You should ask Steve to fill you in one day," he suggests, his teasing still subdued and almost deadpan. It's more difficult for him to speak on how things have changed, his memories being as muddled as they were for so long. Things didn't seem particularly different or novel once he broke free from HYDRA's conditioning and started to regain his sense of self, if only because he still experienced the world and its changes to some limited degree over seventy years. Not like Steve and-- now-- Peggy, who went from one time period to something new and unexpected in the blink of an eye.

"And I wouldn't mind the company." He glances down the river, in the direction heading away from the village. "You probably know the area better than me."

"I may know it better, but I also get in trouble when it comes to exploring it alone. At least, I have since the canyon," is her remark, trying to keep things light, seeing as she hadn't even been alone, but she had been the one to charge forward and go up the cliff without any backup, leaving her up there stranded and alone. "They didn't exactly provide a crash course here, did they?" Peggy notes, taking a place at Bucky's side as she begins a walk away from the village.

"How are you feeling?" she asks, her concern evidence, though she hopes not overwhelming.

"The canyon?" Now there's a story he needs to hear. Once she's by his side, he continues the walk along the river, listening attentively to her, though his eyes scan the surrounding area, trying to familiarize himself with the land as much as possible.

"I'm, ah..." Feeling useless? But he doesn't want to come right out the gate with that. "Still getting used to all this." He looks at Peggy with a faint smile. "I'm just glad I don't have to go at it alone."

"There was an incident," she says in the clinical and official way she would brief any of her soldiers on a mission (especially one that had gone poorly and missed the goal). "There's a reason I no longer have the length of rope I procured and that day is why," is all she has to say on the matter for the moment, but she'll never forget those wary moments of being positioned too high on a crumbling ledge with no way down but death until they'd solved things.

"I know I'm lucky to have allies here, ones that I can trust," she says, affording Barnes a smile. "I can't imagine what I would have done if not for you and Steve, but the others, too. How did Steve meet Sam Wilson, if you don't mind me asking?" she says. "And Thor and Natasha, if you know."

An incident. Bucky casts a quick look at Peggy and nods, taking her tone as an indicator that she'd rather not get into the details. So he just gives a short nod and glances away again. "I haven't been able to test the boundaries of this place," he says, unable to keep all of his frustration regarding the fact out of his voice. Though he wants to see for himself how it's laid out, if there are any weaknesses in the natural formations keeping them here, he doubts he'll ever be able to unless somebody can work up a working prosthetic arm for him.

Which, considering what they've got to work with, is pretty unlikely.

Peggy's question causes Bucky to stop in his tracks, because he can't answer it, not in any satisfactory way. He doesn't really know how Sam Wilson came into Steve's life, though (and he'll never tell Wilson this) he's grateful that the man did. It's good for Steve to have a friend like that, the kind that Bucky can't be anymore.

"I don't know," he admits softly. What he does know is that his first memory of Sam involves him ripping the steering wheel out of the man's car. And he remembers that Sam swooped in (literally) at the right moment to save Steve from him. And that he kept on fighting by Steve's side when he didn't have to. "The first time I saw him, he helped protect Steve from... from me."

Edited 2017-01-10 17:17 (UTC)

"Once you start, you'll figure out quite quickly that you don't want to," she assures, given that she had spent months testing out new paths in the canyon, only to find that they seemed to go on endlessly. She had wasted days, then weeks, and now looking back, she suspects months on a fruitless endeavour that did nothing for her. "I'm beginning to think that the boundaries are right there and it's us who can't see them." Drugs or experimentation or perhaps simply something like the hypnosis techniques used by the Russians.

"Oh," is her response, singular and sharp when Barnes says what he does. "I didn't know," she says, wishing she had a file on the whole thing so that she could better understand why and how this could have happened to him? "You seem yourself again though," she notes. "Something must have changed."

'Just ask him.'

Like it was that easy.

Sam had caught a glimpse of movement outside his house. Steve was out chopping wood and Sam had been getting ready for another day of patrolling the village perimeter. He'd thought he was going with Steve, but it looked like getting wood was going to take longer than planned today. The glimpse of movement, however, was not Steve. It was a bundled, one-armed man heading to who knew where. It as Barnes. Sam remembered the meeting at the inn and knew that Barnes had been just as eager to patrol as he had -- regardless of the fact that he'd volunteered first. He also remembered talking to vets that had lost limbs talking about just wanting to contribute. It was something that came up a lot in his meetings back home -- that feeling of helplessness doubled because now they were down a limb.

Steve had emphasized working together to patrol, to not go out alone. Which is what had brought the thought bubbling to the surface, despite Sam not liking it one bit: Just ask him.

Sam pulled his ball cap on and pulled the door to his house open, snow crunching as he came down the porch and jogged to catch up to Barnes. Just ask him, repeated in his head as he approached.

"Hey Barnes! You busy? Steve's not back from playing woodsman and I need a second for patrol," Sam called out before he could talk himself out of it.

Bucky stops in his tracks as he hears somebody tread through the snow to approach, and he looks over his shoulder, brow lifting with some surprise to see that it's Sam Wilson. At least he manages to keep his brow from going up any higher when the guy asks for his help with a patrol. Not that Bucky hadn't volunteered on his own, back at the meeting, it's just... you know, unexpected. Sure, they fought alongside each other against the spider... kid... but they're not exactly buddies, and he can't even say he blames Wilson for any of that. Bucky's the one, after all, who tried to kill him. More than once.

And he wrecked the guy's car. And his wings. And threw him around back in Berlin.

Steve must've put him up to this.

"Yeah..." Wow, try not to sound too enthusiastic, Barnes. "I mean. I'm not busy. I can patrol with you."

Whether Steve had or not was hardly the point. Although Sam was doing his best to not think about all of those incidents. There was no one here to activate or trigger Barnes' coding and the facts remained that Steve trusted the guy. Even after everything he trusted him. Sam may not have enjoyed the company as much, but he wanted to at least make the effort.

He hadn't thrown the fight and gotten thrown in that abysmal prison just to let this relationship between them remain awkward. Hadn't the whole point of finding Bucky and "bringing him back" been about that?

"Thanks," he said, deciding to fall into step beside him. He wasn't sure where the other had been heading, but it was in the right direction either way so they may as well continue. "Not sure if we're going to need to do this much longer since that hunting party came back--but I don't think it would hurt to make sure since more people are staying inside now due to the weather." Next step was going to be trying to make conversation happen, but if the car ride to the airport was any indication that was going to be...difficult.

Honestly, Bucky didn't have much of a destination in mind when he set out to look for something to do, some place where he could throw his weight in and be helpful. Now that patrolling's the name of the game, there's at least some sense of purpose to his walking.

"It's a good habit to keep," he says with a shrug, peering to the side, then ahead. "What are the chances that thing was the only one out there?" This kind of talk, at least, is easy. Actual conversation? Good luck climbing that mountain of awkwardness, Sam.

"Well, I've been here for a few months now and that was our first time encountering anything like that," Sam replied, not even having to think about it much. Nearly six months of being here and he's fairly certain something like that would have stuck out. Even the animal corpses had been a new discovery, building up to the attack and then the hunting party even. The only other big issue he could recall were the earthquakes but those two things hardly seemed related.

Unless.

"We had some earthquakes a few weeks before that thing start leaving animal parts everywhere. I wonder if those could have released it from somewhere." The real question would be trying to locate a place of origin, but they didn't exactly have a way of finding that, at least, not easily.

He bites back the knee-jerk urge to point out that it not happening in the past doesn't mean it won't happen again in the future, which is probably for the best, because Wilson quickly comes to a conclusion that makes sense to Bucky. If something triggered its arrival...

He looks at Sam. "Could be the case. And it could mean there are more coming." Especially if they get hit with another earthquake.

But for now? It's a return to uncomfortable silence. Enjoy that, Sam.

It wasn't that he was saying it could never happen again, it was more an observation to show what Sam had seen so far. Six months honestly was not a lot of information to pull from in the grand scheme -- but it was all they had. It had to be something, but Sam was informed enough to understand that he shouldn't limit himself to just that information.

"Too bad it's probably too late to try and find a lair or origin point," he mused, thinking too much time had passed.

Being told there's no way out of mindfuck village and seeing it are two different things, and reality isn't quite setting in, drifting between staring at the ceiling of his small room and working on his sleep deficit--whether he wants to or not. The hard bottom of the fountain has several body lengths of freezing water to dissuade exploration, but he's managed to dry out his new clothes and layer them all into one black and grey blob of an outfit and find the river.

Maybe this place isn't a grid, but even Kira can't get lost on the bank. He eyes the sun in the glaring winter sky and--has no idea what time it is, so that's fucked. He's definitely not leaving the river path any time soon.

He turns to the left and walks, hands stuffed in his pockets against the cold, fingers wrapped around the only other object he woke up with--an pair of glasses with slim frames. He hasn't bothered with a pair in years, but someone out there knows him a little too well. The way they cut into his palm is starting to help the stories match up with the feeling in his gut. He isn't optimistic about what he might find along this path.

Not that he'll be finding it today: it's half a mile before he's on his ass, soaking up the cold of a wide rock through denim and scrubs, his aching breath pluming from his mouth. Maybe it was the brush with hypothermia on his first night, or maybe the last of the fight went out of him when he left Manhattan, but he's already exhausted when he senses someone else coming up the bank.

Senses, not hears, and even that comes so late he's seeing a shadow in his periphery before he follows it to the owner. "Jesus," he huffs, almost conversationally: "Make a little noise before you give someone a heart attack."

Coming across the kid (who, upon closer inspection, isn't quite as young as he initially thought), Bucky has to smile a little. Maybe it's the fact that Bucky just watched him slip and fall on his ass, but this one doesn't really seem like the outdoorsy type. Actually, kind of reminds him of Steve-- or, rather, Steve before he finally got to fulfill his dream of joining the army.

"Sorry." At least he tries to keep the amusement out of his voice. That's something, right? "Force of habit."

He'd offer to help the guy up, but considering he's missing an arm... Bucky's pretty sure any attempt will just put him off balance and send him falling on his ass, too.

He huffs a laugh, "The bitching's a force of habit too." Leaning back on his hands, he takes in the lopsided silhouette with an equally habitual appreciation, a curious twist for the empty sleeve but no lingering gaze or comment.

"Was trying to see if I could find where this ends," he adds with a shrug. He's happy enough to recuperate on the ground. "How long have you been here?"

The laugh puts him a little more at ease, and Bucky pulls his mouth into a bit of a smirk. "Good to know," he remarks, stepping a little closer to look down at the water, then to the younger man. Though he appreciates the familiarity that some here-- Steve, Peggy, Sam, and the others from home-- offer, there's a part of Bucky that's starting to enjoy branching out, meeting people who don't look at him with any traces of recognition. He can actually have a fresh start, a chance to make his own impression to people who don't expect a war hero or a killer. At least it's one silver lining to this situation.

"Not long. Less than a month." He glances down the river again. "Is this your first time out here?"

Kira can imagine his own impression--not counting the one of his ass in the snow--all brittle limbed and staring down the length of the river like he really could take it to its end. He knows that he could, given motivation. He'd climbed a series of rooftops and clutter halfway to the East End--but he hadn't started that trip after a trip through time and space, doused in freezing water and on the tail end of half-ass parkour to the East End.

He turns back, not staring at the man but keeping him in his range of attention. When he scrubs a hand up over the hair still growing out at the back of his head, it's cold skin to cold skin, and a chill creeping into his collar. "Yeah, I didn't really have time last night to get an idea of the place. I guess we're lucky we don't have to crawl out of that," he says, nodding at the river.

Bucky lifts his brow. Last night, huh? Not not wasting any time getting a lay of the land. He can't say he wouldn't have done the same, if his arm hadn't been taken from him by whoever's responsible for all of this. His circumstances being what they are, he knows he has to be extra cautious when exploring.

Which is one reason why he keeps a reasonable distance from the water.

Bucky huffs, trying to force a short laugh. It doesn't come easily, or all that naturally. Bad as it was coming to in the fountain with no memory of what brought him there, he can only imagine how much worse it would've been to come out of water that frigid. Not because of the physical aspect-- he's hardy; he can take it-- but the dreadful familiarity of it. "Yeah." So maybe he doesn't sound as casual about it as he might like.

"So, you arrived yesterday?" he asks, though he winces a little at the way it comes out. 'Arrived,' like this is a normal trip or something. He clears his throat awkwardly and adds, "I'm Bucky."

"Kira," he answers, nodding to the voiced question. He finally puts his hands to the cold earth and pushes himself up, brittle-limbed and coming up to the man's chin. He wipes his hands on his coat before offering his right to shake.

Handshakes were normal, normalizing, and his mother had made him practice them with his extra senses assessing before the point of contact--to brace himself against what he might pick up through the touch. Right now, he's trying to figure out how recent the loss of Bucky's arm was, and ready to take a winter-ache wave of hurt, when their hands touch.

Less than a month, and through the magic healing fountain. He thinks it won't be too bad, but he hadn't been running around Manhattan, collecting impressions of different people like some fucked up geo-caching game.

Now that they're both standing at their full heights, the reminder of a long-gone version of Steve Rogers hits him again, making him remember a time when he played the role of protector. The recollection is enough to leave a trace of a smile on his face as he shakes Kira's hand.

His arm's an old injury, and what remains of his enhanced durability keeps the ache in his shoulder diminished, so Bucky's cold fingers and the rough callouses on his hand (not just from the manual labor he'd been doing in the two years since freeing himself from HYDRA, but also from his decades spent as their 'Fist,' handling guns and knives and other weapons) are likely to leave more of an impression than any lingering pain from the loss of his arm.

"Did you get a chance to look around the village much before setting out?" he asks, once he pulls his hand back and into his pocket.

Edited 2017-01-10 17:53 (UTC)

There isn't the ache he expected, when their hands touch--there's warmth, nostalgia that travels through the gut, and Kira can't say what for. It would be a bit much to joke about the man going overboard on smoothing the callouses out of his other hand, so he smiles up instead and mirrors his posture after. Hands in pockets, wishing he had more to wrap his fingers around than his own thumbs.

"Went back to the fountain," he admits, the smile twisting, waning: "They let me sleep at the inn, but I wanted to see this first. Someone said both ends just lead to some kind of canyon wall."

Frank isn't hiding, exactly, but since leaving the village, he's been trying to avoid people - the distraction of them, and the questions. Not everyone's going to understand why he has to be out here, and Frank doesn't care to explain it. He just wants to do what he came out here for.

Normally, he's better at giving people a wide enough berth they don't know they're missing him - but most people don't walk that quiet. Bucky's nearly in sight by the time Frank notices his approach.

His rabbit-trap-in-progress gets left on the ground, new branch bent over a trail and left untied. The man himself is nowhere to be seen on first glance, but if you've got enough training to look up, well, makeshift winter camouflage can only do so much.

An inattentive person might have stepped past the branch without a second thought, but army training-- and the decades spent under HYDRA's thumb-- has Bucky on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary, even if he's just going for a walk. The hunting party may have found their creature, but he'd be an idiot to let his guard down so easily. With only one arm, he knows he's at a severe disadvantage if anything or anyone manages to get the drop on him.

So he stops when he's a bit closer to the abandoned trap, tilting his head a bit as a peers at it. Aside from the trap itself-- and its incompleteness-- there's nothing suspicious or eye-catching on the ground. He casts a glance around, quickly, then pulls his gaze up, into the trees. It's not even that he looks up expecting to find someone, necessarily, but it's habit. The sniper in him is well aware that just because the ground-level looks to be all clear, it doesn't mean you're safe yet.

Once he spots Frank, he keeps his eyes locked on the other man, narrowed a little as he watches him cautiously. Though Bucky may have seen him the day of the girl's death (hard to say; he tried to keep his distance, let people who actually knew her mourn her, but he couldn't help but look at the scene and try to glean what information he could from it), he doesn't immediately recognize Frank from the village. Though he tenses, prepared to back off if he needs to, he doesn't make any sudden moves. He just watches, assessing how much of a threat Frank might be-- or how much of one he might perceive Bucky to be.

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left from my dreaming was a feeling of unnameable dread [NOW CLOSED]

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