riverviewlogs | stars and no stripes

Entry tags:

stars and no stripes

who: Bucky and OPEN
what: Various prompts
when: Throughout December
where: Around Quarantine and just outside the perimeter
warnings: None yet, any content warnings that crop up will appear in the subject line

[i: Around Quarantine; OPEN]

[Ever since Steve went home, making the decision to leave him behind, Bucky has regretted how he behaved. He should have made more of an effort to work past his fear and paranoia, be more of a part of Steve's life. Not just Steve's life, the life that's bustling around him all the time. The people that he's met here have, by and large, been good to him. He has to stop hiding.

It's not exactly stopping hiding, but it's a step in the right direction when he decides to start prowling the streets looking for crimes to stop, or people to help. Has your character been set upon by a mugger? Got hit by a car? Accidentally dropped their ice cream? Never fear, for a threatening looking man in a ratty hoodie and torn jeans is coming to the rescue!]

[ii: A series of rooftops around Quarantine; OPEN]

[Ever since receiving an old record from Ava for Thanksgiving, an unexpected present, Bucky has felt like he should be doing something with it. It feels wrong to let a present, one of his first proper ones in a long time, just languish and gather dust in his backpack. So he's taken the second hand gramophone he got his hands on up to a variety of flat rooftops over the first couple of weeks of December, and started practising dance steps.

They're rusty. Very rusty. But they're not all completely gone, as he feared they might have been, so anyone drawn by the sounds of old 1940s music might catch sight of a man in jeans and a hoodie swing dancing on his own.]

[iii: Mission report, December 16 1991; CLOSED to Tony Stark]

[The significance of the date has passed him by. He's from before when Zemo came to drag all of that out into the open, and if he marked every day that he murdered someone then he'd do nothing else all the year round.

He's just scavenging out in one of the buildings outside of town, looking for anything useful or interesting to gather up. It's an unstable building, but he's being relatively careful as he prowls through the gloom, but he has no idea that someone else is also in the building. He climbs a set of stairs and as soon as he puts his weight on the new floor it combines with the weight of the man already there, and the whole thing cracks and collapses.

Well... great. Just great. Now he's trapped under a bunch of rubble with someone he didn't even get a good look at before everything went dark and slightly painful.]

You alive?

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[And just like that, Tony's irritation vanishes. Probably a good thing, considering he's mostly just been taking everything out on Barnes anyway, but it's hard to focus on being angry at the universe when you're being slapped in the face with somebody else's issues.]

Nobody here is expendable.

[Fuck, he is not equipped for this. Not today, not with this man, probably not in general. But they're here and they're stuck and Tony would very much like to get both of them out of here alive, thanks.]

You start thinking like that, we're both fucked.

I said you were less expendable, not that I was.

[It's a very small difference and, to be honest, it's mostly semantics. But he doesn't want Stark's pity, and he can feel the mood shifting in that direction.]

You think I want the Avengers knocking on my door because I let you get hurt?

[That's definitely the only reason.]

[Pull the other one. Tony shoots Barnes' vague outline a dry look and reaches up to scrub a hand over his face.]

You don't even have a door. You have a hovel. A series of hovels.

[It's slightly muffled, but the sigh he lets out when his hand drops is a lot clearer.]

Look, this is a stupid argument, and coming from me that's saying something. The ceiling isn't coming down any time soon, and if it looks like it's going to then I'll get out of the way. Deal?

[Is this is bargaining stage? Tony's fairly sure this isn't how it's supposed to go.]

Deal.

[He supposes that he can live with that, though it still doesn't sit entirely right with him. There might not be time for Stark to move out of the way once the building starts to shift.]

So-- using your engineering skills, can you tell which point to start digging at?

[There's only the mildest of dryness beneath those otherwise genuine sounding words.]

[Tony is fairly familiar with people mocking him, subtle as it is. Luckily, he also tends to think that people giving him shit is amusing, and all it does is pull a short huff of a laugh from him.]

Come on.

[Without waiting to see if Barnes will follow, he starts heading towards the standing walls, attention more on the mess above them. It's an assumption that Barnes can see him well enough to track him, but well. Tony's seen enough of what Steve can do.]

Are we trying to get out without more damage or just out?

Just out.

[It's a safe bet to assume that he can see well enough to follow Stark, though the man is just an outline in the darkness. He's not quite got the capabilities of Steve, his was a bastardised and imperfect serum, but he's better than the average person.]

Pretty sure this building is a write off now.

[It won't be the first one that he's accidentally destroyed while exploring out here. He keeps his eyes on the silhouette of Stark's back, something finally occurring to him that didn't before.]

Did you come out here to be alone because of what day it is?

[Because if so, that's some really really bad luck, to end up trapped with the one guy that had to make this day worse just by existing.]

[There's the briefest hesitation, a slight misstep before Tony forces himself to keep moving.]

Just trying to keep busy.

[Which is probably the closest to an agreement he's going to give. He's plenty busy now, and really he should have learned to be careful what he asks for by now.]

When the armor gets here, I can call one of the gauntlets and just blast us out.

[Smoothest subject change ever.]

[That's enough of an answer for him to know that he hit on the right thing, which just makes this a whole lot worse. For both of them, he imagines.]

Sounds like a bad idea, that's blasting it in at us, I don't think there's space to get the gauntlet through so you can operate it from this side.

[He folds his arms, tilting his head back so that he can look up at the packed in debris.]

...was it working?

There's cracks, it can get through.

[They'd fallen through, after all. Something the size of a hand can't have that much more trouble. Probably. He tilts his head all the way back to study the ceiling above them, which gives him the added bonus of not looking at Barnes.

Not that he'd be able to see him anyway. Maybe it's the darkness that lets him be more honest. Maybe he's just got nothing left to lose at this point.]

No.

[They fell and the debris impacted overhead to create a ceiling, he doubts there's room for the gauntlet to get through, but he's not going to bother arguing. Maybe it'll be possible, but Stark will have to see for himself when it gets there.]

Boxing.

[Stay with him, he's still on topic, he swears.]

When I need to not think, sometimes that helps me.

[That, at least, gets Tony's attention enough for him to turn an utterly disbelieving look in Barnes' direction.]

Do you really want to be having this discussion with me now?

[Look, they both know exactly what his problem is. Just let him completely fail to deal with it in his own special way.]

Why not?

[He huffs what might be the echo of a bitter laugh, but it's only a shadow of the sound.]

It's not like it can get much worse.

Okay, you're aware that I tried to kill you the last time this subject came up, right?

[Not that this Barnes remembers it, which is probably a good thing for everybody involved. Still, Tony's pretty sure he mentioned it once or twice.]

Not really looking to try that again.

You think you would?

[He doesn't think so.

He can believe that Stark came at him in a moment of passion and grief, and he can understand it, but he doesn't believe that he would now after the dust has settled. If he'd wanted to kill him, there's been plenty of opportunities before now.]

[Tony goes quiet again for a long moment, staring into the dark like it might suddenly give him a brilliant idea.

When he finally answers, it sounds almost like an admittance.]

No. I get it.

I don't blame you for what you tried to do; or, I guess, what you will try and do in my future.

[Does it matter to Stark if the understanding goes both ways?]

It was still my hands, it makes sense that you'd hate me.

It wasn't-- [you except it was, and Tony shifts like he suddenly has too much energy to contain.] --a choice. I know that.

[It does, oddly, make him feel slightly better that Barnes doesn't blame him. He's not sure if Steve still does, it's another one of those things they're not quite talking about.]

I don't hate you. I hate...that it happened. I hate that I spent two decades thinking he was an asshole who'd been drinking at the wrong time. I hate that she was just collateral. I hate that someone made you do it.

[He's just babbling now, words tumbling over themselves like he has to get it all out quickly before he changes his mind. But by the time he runs down, that last little bit of coiled anger is slipping away, and Tony just feels tired.

Too bad they've still got things to do.]

But I don't hate you. Not really. I hate him. The Winter Soldier.

[Bucky stands still and silent while Stark talks, letting the words wash over him with satisfaction. He’s never come face to face with one of the people directly affected by the Soldier before Stark, and it’s a bitter sort of comfort that even the people who’ve been hurt by him the most (at least the ones still alive) can see that it wasn’t him. Not really. It helps to silence the whispers of guilt that are always there to accuse him of not fighting it hard enough.

Sounds like this is something that Stark needed to get out anyway, like lancing poison from a wound.]

I hate him too.

[It’s simple and quiet in contrast to Stark’s emotional ramble.]

He’s always there, he’s always a threat. He’s the reason I can’t remember my Ma’s name or what my favourite food was, he’s why I can never live a normal life, and he’s the reason I have blood on me that’s never going to clean off. Trust me, Stark, you’re not alone in hating him.

[He falls silent, but only for a second.]

I’m glad you hate him so much. It means if something happens, if I become him again, there’s someone here that’ll do what’s necessary before anyone else gets hurt.

[Because God only knew that Steve wouldn’t.]

[Tony lets that wash over him in turn, still feeling something shifting uncomfortably under his skin. He'd start pacing if he didn't worry that he'd trip over something, and ending up flat on his face is not really something he wants to deal with at the moment.

He does nod once into the darkness, even if Barnes can't see it and probably doesn't need to anyway. Because he would do it, if he had to.

But...]

What if I could get rid of him?

[Of the various possible answers that he’s expecting, this really isn’t one of them. He can’t tell if he’s being mocked somehow, a cruel offer of something that can’t exist as revenge. But that doesn’t seem right.

His tone of voice is completely without inflection when he replies, not giving away what he thinks yet.]

How?

I have -- I was working on tech. To deal with memory.

[It's not like he hasn't thought of this before, what exactly the BARF tech could do. Thought about it before things completely went to shit, even, though not seriously.

Now, though. Now it's all he can think about, ideas all rushing in at once.]

Maybe it wouldn't be enough on it's own, but I have a friend who was working on something that could help.

[The silence is almost deafening after that, and Bucky has to resist the urge to grab out at Stark and pin him against the wall, desperately demand to know why he and his 'friend' have been working on this sort of thing at all.

He doesn't. He has more control than that.]

Why were you working on that? What-- what kind of tech?

Why not?

[He doesn’t think about his mother at her piano, doesn’t think about I know you tried you best.

He clears his throat, trying his hardest to find nonchalance.]

I don’t know if you noticed, but memory is kind of an issue for a lot of people. I started working on it before you ever resurfaced.

Why not isn't good enough.

[There's just a hint, the absolute barest crack in his neutral tone of voice, of a snap. There's a reason behind everything that someone like Stark does, and he wants to know the truth.

Things like memory, and things that could maybe alter or target them, that's a big red button where he's concerned.]

Because I needed it.

[A snap of his own, as Tony spins towards the vague outline he’s stuck underground with. It’s easier in some ways, not to see him. To just shout into the darkness.]

It was for me.

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