stars and no stripes

[advanced]

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?

Comments

[buildsomething]

Sure. Because there are plenty of people who’d understand. Aliens and wormholes and homicidal robots.

[His shoulders twitch restlessly and Tony shakes his head.]

No. I handle my own trauma. No one else needs to deal with it.

[But that’s what gets him into trouble over and over, isn’t it? Ultron, the Accords. Tony’s attempts to handle everything himself.]

Fuck. Okay, look. Do you want to try this or not.

[advanced]

[He's careful to keep his distance; not because he doesn't think that he could take Stark if it came down to it, but because he doesn't want this to end in a fight.]

No.

[And yes.]

I don't know.

[Somehow it's easier to even contemplate this down in the darkness.]

I'd need to ask a lot more questions first before I even considered it.

[buildsomething]

[And, well, fair enough, even if it does make Tony sigh softly.]

I'd send you the specs, if I thought it would help. What do you want to know?

stupid clicking on access and things, sorry

[advanced]

I want to know how it works.

[Not the dry specs, the exact details on how it goes into his head. He's had enough people messing around in there, it's not something he'd grant to just anyone.]

[buildsomething]

[He takes a moment to consider how to explain it without going into too many details, how to explain it to Barnes and eventually just gives up and shakes his head.]

What if I show you?

[advanced]

[That sets his teeth on edge, it's all too vague for him, like he's being danced slowly into a corner.]

How?

[buildsomething]

On me. Once I get it rebuilt.

[He folds his arms across his chest and shrugs.]

I'll get it set up, JARVIS can scan my brain activity and you can see everything in real time.

[advanced]

[He's still not entirely sure, not least because of Stark's possible motives.]

Why are you trying to help me?

[They've pretty much well established that he's not Stark's favourite person.]

[buildsomething]

Did we not cover this?

[His look of exaggerated exasperation would probably be a lot more effective if anyone could see it.]

I get to kill the Winter Soldier. Where's the downside?

[advanced]

[It's not quite as simple as killing the Soldier, but he can respect that as an explanation.]

I don't trust you.

[Just putting that out there.]

I don't know if I can let you in my head.

[buildsomething]

I'm not getting in your head.

[Not technically, anyway.]

My tech as it stands lets you project memories and...interact with them in a limited way. No more invasive than making you talk about it.

[advanced]

Then how do you think it can remove trigger words from my head?

[If anything, won't it provide a massive risk? If he projects a memory of him being triggered, won't that trigger him in the present once he hears the words?]

[buildsomething]

I told you it still needed work.

[Defensive? Never. But this is his tech they're talking about.]

My friend I mentioned, he's got something he's working on that promotes lucid dreaming. I'm thinking if we can get you to alter the memory in your own head, we can break the conditioning.

[advanced]

[He's getting equally defensive in return, his usually blank-toned voice gaining sharpness.]

What friend? If I don't trust you in my head, what the hell makes you think that I'm gonna trust a stranger that you won't even name?

[buildsomething]

Don't be dramatic.

[Says the man currently rolling his eyes in the darkness.]

His name is Cisco, he's a good guy. And for the last time, neither of us are getting into your head. We're giving you a chance to clean out your own head.

[advanced]

[He'll be as dramatic as he damn well pleases when it concerns something like this.]

Would he have to be there? Would it record what I saw so other people could see it?

[buildsomething]

No and no. It's whatever you want it to be.

[He spreads his hands a little, a combination of frustration and bafflement.]

Look, I get that you don't trust me. But I have literally nothing to gain from fucking with you.

[advanced]

It's not about you, Stark. I trust you more than I trust a lot of other people here.

[Maybe that's a surprising revelation, but he's earned it in helping out with his arm and by how he dealt with being in his dreams.]

I just don't trust anyone easy, and I sure don't trust technology that's attached to my brain.

[buildsomething]

[There's a moment of silence, Tony clearly taken aback by the comment. But he rallies quickly enough, because of course he does.]

Okay fair, but the point stands. I don't know how else to do this, other than with tech.

[advanced]

How sure are you that the tech will even work?

[The trigger words aren't something he's keen to mess with, not if there's even a chance something could go wrong.]

[buildsomething]

[He turns an affronted look on Barnes at the insult, but honestly it's not a bad question and Barnes can't even see it anyway. Tony will just magnanimously ignore the insult to his abilities.]

If it doesn't, we keep trying until we find something that does.

[advanced]

[He's not a damn lab rat to keep testing more crap out, especially not with something so delicate. But he can at least tell that Stark is genuinely trying to help, so the least he can do is try not to be a raging jerk about it.]

...we can maybe try it. Maybe. I'll be in contact in a few days.

[This would be the point that he'd run away, if only there wasn't a lot of rubble above him.]

[buildsomething]

Okay. Great.

[And like he doesn't want to be stuck in this conversation any more than Barnes does, he turns his attention back to the ceiling above them, frowning a little.

He walks towards the wall, eyes still up like he's studying something, then presses a hand against it.]

Hey, c'mere. You think you could punch right here?

He taps against a very specific spot.]

[advanced]

[He falls silent again, just watching as Stark moves about the gloom. He wants to be out of here right now, being trapped is just increasing the itch under his skin the longer it lasts.

If punching the ceiling of rubble will help, he can do that.]

Sure, you might want to stand back.

[He curls his metal fingers into a fist and lets fly, vicious and hard.]

[buildsomething]

[It cracks the wall, but as Tony had hoped it also shifts the rubble above them slightly. Not a lot. Just enough for a beam of light to shoot down and nearly blind Tony for a second as his eyes try to adjust to something other than the dark.

And for one metal gauntlet to slide through. Even with his eyes closed, Tony puts his hand up to let the gauntlet settle in place and wrap around his wrist.

Now that's better.]

Okay then. Who's for getting the hell out of here?