riverviewlogs | survival of the fittest

Entry tags:

survival of the fittest

who: Bucky and anyone!
what: Bucky is a big old thief, tracks down his name twin, and also goes monster fighting with Clark
when: Anytime between March 8th and March 12th
where: Around Quarantine
warnings: Probably violence

[i: Around Quarantine; open to anyone]

[Bucky has chosen to eschew the communal housing gifted to him, as well as all the benefits that affords. Like food, shelter, and access to a shower. The last two aren't such a big deal, but he needs a lot of food to keep him going, the bastardised serum in his veins makes him burn through calories at a ridiculous rate.

Which is why he's ghosting through Quarantine on the look out for empty housing or possible a not very well attended street food stall, in order to snatch a hand out and take something. He can be found shoplifting in the street; or, if you'd prefer, breaking into your character's housing in search of food.]

[ii: Down a back alley somewhere; closed to Bucky Barnes]

[Ever since he saw that name on the network, his own name, Bucky has been in overdrive trying to figure out what's going on. It takes him a day or so to track down who owns the username, and then another day to just follow them around and try and figure out who they are. It's only when he catches the imposter out alone, whatever he might be doing, that he reveals himself by trying to drag the other man down an alleyway in an explosion of movement and bad decisions.]

[iii: Monster hunting; closed to Clark Kent]

[The perimeter is of interest to Bucky, partially because it means an escape from this town and partially because he knows that Stark is going to be making upgrades to it. It's why he's scouting around it today.

He's too focused on the possible security measures, trying to find surveillance equipment or defence mechanisms, that he has completely failed to notice the large monster shaped like a monstrous caterpillar creeping up behind him on silent feet.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ Sam's out wandering through the markets when someone familiar catches his eye. Which apparently isn't all that strange around here, since there are multiple Steves, a different Tony, (thankfully) the same Wanda and Scott he's used to, and- others. This guy is trying to get the old five-finger discount, and in two years of hunting Bucky, Sam's learned more about how to be successful than Steve has - which is to say that he knows damn well that the man doesn't necessarily want to be found.

So instead, Sam buys a few pieces of food here, a few there - munches idly on bits and pieces as he goes along to look more normal. And when he reaches a more deserted place, he leaves the food sitting out, then calmly sits down a good distance away from it, both hands clearly visible and empty. And he waits. ]

[It's a smart tactic.

Bucky knows who this is. Even aside from fighting him only a few months back, he's done a lot of research since on both the Avengers and the people close to Steve. Sam Wilson, counsellor at the VA, veteran himself of combat duty.

He stays a long way back when the food is put out, but he picks a position that lets him watch both Sam and the food for any sign of a trap. It takes a full half hour for him to decide it's safe enough to come down, ready to bolt if there's any sign of Steve, and make his way slowly to the pile of food.

His eyes, though, stay fixed on Sam.]

[And Sam stays there the whole time, perfectly motionless. Doesn't do anything to scare him off, just stays there in plain sight.]

It's safe, I'm not gonna do anything.

[Not that he expects Bucky to just take him at his word, but he might as well try.]

Figured it'd be safer for everyone if I just bought you some food. [Because if Bucky gets caught stealing- well. Sam can see it turning into a mess pretty easily. So he's trying to keep Bucky and hapless civilians and police officers from potentially getting hurt.]

[The second that Sam speaks, Bucky is freezing again, not quite taking the food where it's been left for him.]

You were watching me.

[It's not exactly a question.

It's not good, though, if he was noticed. It means Sam has more skills that he gave the man credit for.]

Wasn't really looking for you, but yeah.

[Honestly, he mostly chalks it up to dumb luck. He's a soldier, not a spy, and Bucky's been trained at covert ops by the best. After he'd caught a couple glimpses of the man, he'd continued mostly on the assumption that Bucky had seen him, and that he'd keep trailing him till he was sure he was safe.]

You don't want Steve to find you, do you?

[Because there's no HYDRA here, no one to hunt Bucky except for his best friend. And there has to be a reason why Bucky's avoiding the public housing and stealing food.]

[There's a very obvious moment where he nearly bolts right then and there, eyes darting right around the area to see if Steve is nearby. Perhaps Sam is only keeping him talking so that Steve can sneak up?]

I know you'll tell him that you saw me.

[There's no reason for Sam to lie; and, from what he's seen, the man is unfailingly loyal to Steve first and foremost.]

[And it's true; Sam's not going to lie to his best friend. But whether or not he'll actually tell him that he saw Bucky- well, that's something else entirely. Lying by omission, technically, but it's not the same as flat out telling him he hasn't seen him.]

Look, I know you need plenty of food. You took one of the phones, right? Text me a place every day and I'll bring you something. I won't tell Steve about it - and I know you aren't gonna believe that, but I promise it's true. I'll just bring the food and leave it, and you can sit for a couple hours or whatever till you're satisfied Steve isn't going to creep up on you and pin you down. Although I can tell you right now, it'll taste better hot. I spent two damn years chasing after you, Bucky, and I know you can hide. I know you want to stay hidden now, and I'm going to let you do that. Yeah, I might tell Steve that I saw you, if he asks, but as far as I'm concerned, I'm done with the hunt. You wanna stay away from him for whatever reason, that's your choice. I don't know why, and I don't need to know why.

[Well. He might be a little curious, but he won't mention that.]

[Sam's damn right, Bucky doesn't believe for even a second that he'll keep this from Steve at all. He'll likely use the first drop time to set up a trap with Steve to catch him, and he'd rather go hungry than let that happen.]

Two years?

[That's what catches his attention the most, though, a blatant lie already.]

You can't have been chasing me that long, the fight in D.C. was only six months ago.

[Sam frowns and tilts his head. There's something weird about this - okay, so dude's had his brains scrambled pretty regularly, but he didn't think his memory was that patchy. He knows who Sam is, after all.]

DC? Last time I saw you was at the airport in Leipzig. Some kid dressed up like a spider kicked both our asses and you had to cut us free from his weird webbing shit. Then you and Steve took off in the Quinjet and I got to enjoy a nice stay on the Raft before Steve busted all of us out.

[And now Bucky's frozen in Wakanda. Sam doesn't add that bit, though.]

[It's probably obvious that none of that makes any sense to Bucky at all, and he can't decide if this is a case of another different reality, or a different time. Both of which are worrying in their own right.]

None of that happened. I haven't seen you since we fought in DC. I've never been to Leipzig.

[Sam just sighs and rolls his eyes.]

Great. I already gotta deal with Tony Stark from some weird-ass alternate reality, and now the people I should know don't have any idea what's going on. Look, buddy, where I'm from, Steve and I spent two years looking for you after DC. You eventually got caught - long story - and you and me and Steve and a bunch of other people fought to...

Well. That's an even longer story. It's too bad you don't remember that road trip, though.

[And Sam's refusal to move his seat up the whole damn time. If only you remembered that quality bonding, Bucky.]

[This is really not doing anything to make him feel calmer, and he backs up a step away from the food as Sam keeps going on.]

You're lying.

[He has to be. Bucky hasn't been caught, it's not been that long. Except what if it has been? What if they've got to him and wiped him again? What if he's forgotten?]

[ Oops. Sorry, Bucky. ]

Man, if I were lying, I'd make up a nice, simple story. The truth is way more convoluted than any lie I could tell you. At a guess, I'd say it's some weird timeline fuckery with all this- [ He waves a hand at the entire goddamn planet. ]

And, shit, I know it sounds weird to be talking about time travel, don't get me wrong. But we already got doubles from goddamn alternate universes, so who knows what else is going on?

You're lying.

[It comes out a bit louder this time and Bucky is on a hair trigger, ready to spring at Sam or run for it. The food is completely ignored now, everything in him trying to figure out where the lie is because it has to be there.

The alternative is too terrifying to comprehend.]

[ Sam doesn't know Bucky well enough to keep pushing him, but he does know that trying to provoke the mentally unstable super-solder slash assassin is a Bad Idea. He lowers his voice into a calmer, more soothing pitch. ]

All right, all right, it's just a story. It's okay.

[ He doesn't want to tell Bucky it's a lie, but he doesn't know what else to do, either. ]

[That somehow makes it worse. At least if Sam fought back, Bucky could continue to rail against it. This attempt at soothing just makes him fear all the more that it's real.

He changes tactic immediately, spinning on a dime.]

Tell me the whole thing. Everything.

You gonna flip out at me and attack me if I do, or are you gonna sit nice and quiet and listen?

[ Although he knows it isn't a conscious choice, that if he gets too agitated and feels threatened, he'll attack anyway. But Sam figures that if he gets him to think about it and be more aware, he'll try harder to control the instinct.

Hopefully. ]

[His jaw tightens, but he nods.]

I'm not going to attack you.

[Let's hope he can keep to that promise. Just being out here this long is making him antsy, it's a bit exposed for someone trying to live like a ghost.]

Good. Eat your food or something.

[ Look, there are plums. Who doesn't want to eat a nice plum while listening to a story?

Sam takes a deep breath, trying to figure out where to start. ]

So Steve and I spent two years looking for you, chasing cold leads all over Europe. And he kept on going with the whole Avengers thing - after Washington, there was Sokovia. That turned into a real mess, got a lot of people talking about superheroes. I joined the Avengers, and one day, we fucked up real good in Lagos, chasing down this asshole who was trying to steal bioweapons. There was an explosion, bystanders got killed, and it sorta turned into an international incident.

That led to the Sokovia Accords - about a hundred nations wanted to register superhumans, track our international travel, put the Avengers under the control of a UN council. Steve wasn't too keen about that, and he was sort of the de facto leader of those of us who didn't wanna sign that bullshit. The Accords had a signing ceremony in Vienna, and some asshole decided he was gonna dress up like you and bomb them. Which, of course, meant that you were pretty much instantly the most wanted man in the world.

[Well, he does enjoy plums... But he doesn't eat the food, attention wholly arrested on Sam's surprisingly concise tale of something that sounds insane. Why would anyone want to dress up as him and pin that sort of bombing on him?]

I'm already one of the most wanted men in the world.

[One more act of terrorism isn't going to change that.]

That's how you found me? Came to arrest me? Where was I?

[Then he can make sure not to be there in the future if he goes back, so he stays not caught.]

Okay, but you don't have your face plastered all over every media outlet. As good as you are at hiding, even you couldn't manage to go unnoticed after that.

-and we didn't come to arrest you. The guys who did had orders to shoot on sight, so we went to Bucharest to intercept them. Ended up in a car chase with you, me, Steve, and the new king of Wakanda, who was out to kill you cause he thought you'd killed his dad. We were all in violation of the accords, so they hauled us off to Berlin. Same guy who bombed Vienna took the place of the shrink sent to interrogate you, blew out the power and- [Sam hesitates for a moment. The hesitation itself is telling; there's only so many things Sam would try to avoid telling him.]

He used the trigger words. Made you flip out and fight everyone. You tried to grab a chopper and get away, ended up in the river with Steve. The three of us got the hell out of there, and you said you thought he'd be heading for Siberia to activate the other soldiers.

[Yeah. It's nothing he wants to tell Bucky, but it's the truth.]

[Bucharest. He'll file that in the back of his mind as important, and if he remembers all this when he gets back then he'll make sure to keep as far away from Romania as possible. This can't happen if he's not where Sam says he will be.

And good God does he not want it to happen.

Any doubts about Sam telling the truth slip away in an instant, because there's no way that he could know about the other Soldiers or the trigger words or-- any of it, not if he hadn't witnessed it. The idea of being triggered again is his worst nightmare, and the fingers of his metal hand ball into a fist.

His throat feels dry and he backs up a step, definitely in fight or flight mode.]

Did he?

[The question is hoarse, fear hidden beneath the surface.]

Were they activated?

[Or maybe it'll still happen, just somewhere else. Because that's just how much the future wants to kick you in the balls repeatedly, Bucky. Not that Sam's too happy about it, either - at least, not about telling him.]

Nah, he shot them all in the head while they were still under. The important part was to get Steve and you and Stark to Siberia. See, this asshole, his family died in the battle of Sokovia, and he blamed the Avengers. Never mind that his city had been, you know, raised into the air by a genocidal robot who was going to drop it from a mile up and kill everyone in Europe, he wanted to wreck Steve and Tony personally. And somehow, he found out about one of your missions, and that Steve was keeping a real big secret from Tony.

[It's hard to remain calm when he sees Bucky tense up; some primal instinct in Sam wants to prepare to defend himself in case he loses control. But he just keeps sitting there like everything's fine and he isn't marginally worried a super-soldier's going to beat the shit out of him.]

Edited 2017-03-13 12:35 (UTC)

[He is a still a little caught on being triggered. It means he's right to keep his distance, right to hide, because he can't trust himself at all. Everything they put inside him is still there and he's scared that he doesn't know where the Soldier ends and he begins. Maybe there isn't a beginning and ending at all, maybe he is just an amalgamation now of everyone and everything he's ever been.

The rest of what Sam says washes over him without much impact. It's good the other Soldier's are dead, and he has innumerable missions to use against him.]

Steve is here.

[Two Steves and he's changing the subject, but whatever. His eyes are fixed on Sam, utterly focused.]

You have to keep him from looking for me, it's safer that way. You understand?

Man, if he finds out you're here, there's not gonna be anything in the world I can do to keep him from looking for you. You know that as well as I do.

[Sam sighs, shaking his head.]

What I said earlier, about the food? I meant it. I'm not gonna flat out lie to him, but I won't tell him anything, either. I don't want you to starve, even if you are a goddamn idiot.

survival of the fittest

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