riverviewlogs | hide and seek

Entry tags:

hide and seek

who: Bucky and OPEN
what: Bucky is being a total hermit, and there's a burglar dog
when: Early January
where: Around Riverview
warnings: None yet, any that crop up will go in the subject lines

[One; Out in the ruins; Open]

[Pierce is here, and that means that Bucky is not.

He's abandoned literally every bolthole that he'd claimed as his own, he's erased his username from the network and dumped his phone - so that any attempt to contact him that way will result in the number not being found - and has gone into as deep a hiding as he can possibly manage. This isn't just paranoia, this is an actual handler in the city and the possibility of everything going very very wrong.

It's been a few weeks now, so anyone that leaves him food semi-regularly might notice that it's not being collected. Anyone that he sometimes stalks, or who stalks him, might notice that he's just not around. But he's definitely not gone back through the portals.

If anyone is truly determined enough to track him down, they might find him hiding out among the ruins.]

[Two; Around Riverview; Open]

[The last thing that Bucky did before he went into hiding was go to reclaim his dog, Sasha, after months of refusing to keep her. He needs her now, and not just for her usual skillset of assisting with traumatised veterans. No, he's got her trained to go and steal food for him.

Whether your character owns a store, is just shopping, or is even at home in their apartment; they might hear a scrabbling noise as a rather large golden retriever noses her way in and starts rooting for food. Or, if she manages to get food, then they could follow her as she runs off with her stolen treats.]

[ooc: I realise this isn't the most interactive of logs (which is why there's the option of chasing the dog), but unfortunately Bucky is in deep hiding at the moment. Anyone is welcome to tag in, though, not just existing CR!]

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[The last thing Bucky wants to do is expose his other self's new hiding spots. He doesn't seek him out all that often, so he couldn't have been sure the other him went underground, but it makes sense. He has to be aware by this point in time. Has to know what has oozed into the quarantine like so much pollution.

He spends a couple of days searching for signs of where Bucky has been. Once he's figured out a general area, he leaves a note, quietly inconspicuous. It's coded, but a former Soldier would be able to figure it out easier than anyone else - it says "I saw him", and is followed by the name of a nearby, tucked-away landmark and a time of day, signed with JBB.

He leaves it for the other to come to him, if he will, and the next few days at the specified time of day, he spends a few hours at the landmark, in his Guard uniform, managing to look like any other patrolman taking a break on his route. The direction he comes from is different every day to discourage followers. He doesn't know if this will work, but he needs to talk to the other Barnes after everything that's happened recently, while not wanting to barge into his bolt-hole and startle him.

They're both on edge right now and the last thing they need is to fight each other.]

Edited 2018-01-04 16:10 (UTC)

[He finds the message on the same day that it's left for him, he's quick to notice any changes or any signs that someone has entered the territory that he's using to hide out in. It's not a hard message to decipher; but, similarly, it might not have been a hard message to forge either. He has no proof that this isn't a trap designed to lure him out of hiding.

For two days he does nothing.

On the third and fourth day, he observes Barnes arrive, stand for a length of time, and the leave again when he doesn't show up. He makes sure to follow him from a safe distance to make sure that he isn't meeting up with anyone else when he leaves. It's only on the fifth day that he eventually steps into view while Barnes is stood there.

He looks a mess, filthy and haggard, and already losing a little too much weight. He can't hide like this indefinitely, he has far fewer options here than he did back home, where he could hop a plane and disappear to a whole different continent. His voice is raspy, too quiet.]

I got your note.

[He expects it to take time. Barnes will be even more wary than Bucky is right now, and will want to make sure it's a legitimate request. It's okay; Bucky has a sniper's patience when it comes down to something like this.

Bucky tenses the moment he hears Barnes move, but when he spots him, run ragged already, he blows out a breath and relaxes just a fraction, moving back to sit on the rotting stump of a tree, hands flexing on his knees.]

Thanks for coming. [His pack is sat on the ground a couple feet away. It's standard issue gear for a patrolman and not large; he couldn't bring much without it looking suspicious, but he nods toward it anyway.] Got a few MREs and water if you want 'em. It ain't much, I couldn't pack extra without it looking strange. [Discretion over convenience won out.]

[When Sam finds a dog rooting around his kitchen, he just looks at it for a second - possibly asks the dog if it's actually a person in disguise, because thank you Stephen, his life is now full of magical fuckery. The dog doesn't answer, of course, so he gives her a bowl of chopped chicken - and when she tries to run off with it, he realizes that she's getting food for someone (or something) else. Maybe she has a litter of puppies, or maybe it's something different.

Regardless, he gently takes the bowl away and packs her a small bag of food, making sure it's something she can easily carry in her mouth. And when she leaves, there's a crow ready to follow her.

Which is why, about fifteen minutes after Sasha returns to Bucky, Sam makes his way into the ruins where he's hiding.]

[ For Shigeru traveling past the wall and to the ruins is something he does to train and to clear his head. He packs what he needs in terms of cleaning supplies and he heads out one day. Bucky will probably notice him first than the other way around.

His sigil that floats silently behind him is...strange and ominous looking now. Black veins of miasma stretch throughout it. Shigeru's own body is strange looking as well, his eyes are completely black with purple irises and with every exhale of breath black smoke will drift out from his mouth. Runes are seen along the side of his neck glowing in a fierce purplish light. He'll be training with his sword as he cuts through rubble and makeshift dummies that he's prepared on one of his many visits before. ]

[Her conversation with Pierce doesn't go particularly well. It had been useful, but it still left her feeling like her skin was crawling. The worse part was that he knew about her. The only good thing about that strange half hour spent talking in his kitchen was that she'd found her answer, or a piece of it, anyway.

But there are questions it leaves lingering. Things that eat under her skin. Because she doesn't know if she's safe. She thinks she is. But last time she made that call she set the residential building on fire, and there are reasons she cards through over and over for why she can't just talk about it with anyone else. James thinks she's better than she is. Natasha is good, but she's still an unknown quantity. No one else would really understand what's at stake.

So she leaves a note for Bucky, asking him to find her, when he can. It's coded this time, when her other hadn't been, something she knows he can break. She wanders the ruins for a couple hours every day after; has her duffel bag with her these days, and she scavenges for bits of metal, something to focus on as well as a believable cover as she waits to see.

She doesn't press, just waits to see.]

[It's the same choice that he would have made and so that just gets a small approving nod before he's down by the pack digging out the water first, chugging it back as if he'd never drunk before in his life. He gets through a full bottle and a half before he actually speaks again.]

You said you saw him.

[Not a question, more an opening for Barnes to tell him everything. He assumes that's why the man is here, it's the courtesy that he'd pay if one of the handlers for his other self showed up.]

[Damn it.

He didn't notice the crow, he's too focused on watching for people following Sasha, and so it's too late for him to escape by the time Sam is converging on his position. What does he do? Sam probably doesn't know that he's here, right? He's probably just out here for something to do with one of those missions, or whatever job he's doing these days.

He should get out of here.

He ends up dropping what remains of the chicken on the ground and trying to bolt for it through the trees. Clearly this will work and is an excellent idea.]

[Well now... that's not what he's expecting to see, and it's a whole different persona to the shy and retiring doctor that he usually presents himself as. It sets Bucky's teeth on edge, fingers itching for a weapon that he refuses to draw.

He doesn't intend to be seen, just to observe and see where the hell this is going, but he doesn't count on his stupid dog. She runs out from cover, barking loudly to try and get Shigeru's attention.]

[She's one of the ones that he's the least suspicious to hear from; after all, he had contact with her just before he went into deep hiding and they did say that they'd try and look out for one another. But getting a note immediately has him tensing as he destroys it; she knows what's at stake here, there's no way she'd be contacting him for nothing.

It's only the day after she leaves the note that he shows up.

He follows her for about an hour, just making absolutely sure that she's alone, before he steps out from behind one of the ruins at a safe distance, half in shadow.]

What is it?

[The way that he slips out of nowhere had gotten almost comfortable, but she's on edge, so she flinches for half a moment this time. That tension in her body, it brightens her eyes, and she shakes her head and exhales.

She shrugs a little awkwardly, quiets for a moment. It takes her a breath, trying to work out how to explain. She's never explained everything that was done to her, although he knows some of it thanks to the memory share. She'd offered to tell him then, but he'd said she didn't have to and she'd appreciated that more than she could say. The lack of obligation.]

Pierce-- knows the program I was part of.

[She avoids saying that he knows what she is, though she suspects that too. She leaves out the quiet horror that is the fact that Pierce is the only person her life is real for. Where he said Ivan and a few sharp turns of conversations revealed that name meant the same thing to him that it did to her. She's not so sloppy these are things he could have found out, not here.

She thinks he's right with what they'd decided on before, but this is bad. She hadn't really considered it before, not seriously. No one knew who she was, it was a fact. That fact was less sharp in Bucky's case, but still a fact. And then there was Pierce in the kitchen with his glass of milk and that certainty had crumbled.]

[ Shigeru is entirely focused on his training and...keeping himself in control. He doesn't use his powers for very long nowadays, the state of the sigil floating ominously behind him being the key reason for it. But he does turn when he hears that dog barking, his eyes blinking in surprise before his powers disappear in the blink of an eye. His eyes will revert back to their normal greenish hue and he'll place his sword in the ground as he bends down to greet the dog with a smile.

He's wondering where she came from, honestly, someone has to be around right? He'll look up in the direction of where she came from with some mild concern. ]

[Bucky watches the other man for just a moment as he goes for the water, then turns his attention outward again, tracking flickers of movement far off that only turn out to be small animals.]

Yeah. On the beach a little while back, and more recently he was watching one of Steve's sparring matches against one of the Asgardians. I think he knows who I am at this point, but I expected that. [His brow knits into a frown, and he finally says, his meaning clear,] I ain't worried for me.

[That she's rattled is obvious, but he's not entirely sure why. He had assumed that Pierce would know who she was and the program she was a part of; the man had been head of HYDRA, and the sort of person to want to know what was going on at every level, he would have known of all major programs in development.

All it does is prove that they're likely from the same world.

He watches her in silence for a few moments, as if for what more might be coming, but nothing more is coming.]

You didn't already know that?

[Bucky stays as still as he can, but it doesn't help too much when Sasha just trots right over to his hiding place with her tail wagging.

Jaw set, he stands up, looking much more dishevelled than he did the last time they met.]

That's some weapon for a doctor.

Maybe you should be.

[It's not that Pierce can control this Barnes, they've already established that their methods of control were different. But he's a dangerous man and he'll likely see any Barnes as his property.]

Have you told anyone else?

I'm wary, but not worried. [Being worried about himself would imply that he cared overmuch about what might happen to himself. He doesn't. He cares more about what Pierce might do to others.] If it were just me, I could handle him. I'm more concerned about him involving other people. You, Steve, Ava.

I only told Steve, and I asked Tony about Pierce. That's it.

[He doesn't like that more people have been involved, but he can't exactly do anything about it now.]

Don't try and handle him. Just leave him alone, don't antagonise him. He can't do anything here if we don't back him into a corner.

That was never my plan. I've got a good rep in Riverview. I'm not blowin' that unless I'm the one backed into a corner. [It's his main defense right now, that he's reliable and well thought of in the Perimeter Guard. Pierce is a lot newer, if it comes down to he said he said.]

What about you, though? Does he know you're here?

No one else knows me here. Not from before.

[It's a soft explanation, a slight shrug of her shoulders. It makes it that much more cutting that Pierce does. And then there's the fact that he was following her now, the way he'd asked her to dance, pulled her by the hand out in the middle of a crowd of people, trying to teach her things like she's back in 7B all over again.

Maybe it should remind her of the Academy, but it doesn't.]

I never expected you to, because-- [She trails off there, shrugs her shoulders. She still tries to slip around the details of that.] But Natasha, Tony. Steve. I didn't think Pierce would be any different.

[She quiets for a moment, frustration in the line of her jaw. The one time she'd been glad someone didn't know who she was and it crumbles.] They have him assigned as CEO of a research lab.

Yeah.

[Pierce had tracked him down and brought him some mail, as if they were friendly neighbours.]

He won't find me again, I know how to hide, even in a place like this.

[He snorts, though there's absolutely no mirth in the sound at all. Of course he's already been given a position of relative power here, and the resources to potentially do dangerous things.

It just raises his suspicions of the people here and what's really going on. He's never trusted that they immediately seem to have work for everyone, and he hates how many people just go along with it. But anyone who thinks that Pierce is suitable to be a CEO of a research lab is a dangerous person themselves.]

At least that'll make it easy to keep tabs on him.

[High profile positions make it hard to hide.]

What kind of research does the lab do?

[Don't go through the trees. You know why?

Because a big white spooky-ass bird about the size of an eagle is going to dive down in front of him and look intimidating as fuck. Not that he stays there long enough to make himself a target; it's just enough of an appearance to startle him.]

Whoever you are, you just wasted some perfectly damn good chicken that your dog went to the trouble of stealing for you.

[ Oh! Oh...he saw that did he?! Shigeru will look a bit sheepish and self conscious as he eyes his sword, it's not glowing with the same purplish light that it was when Shigeru was holding it before.

He supposed Bucky deserved an explanation. ]

I'm...not just a doctor back home. I'm part of a special ops team that hunts down monsters in my world, and people dealing in illegal black market trading.

What are you doing out here you look a bit... [ disheveled isn't quite the right word, but Bucky doesn't look like he's been around civilization for a few days. ]

Is everything okay?

Edited 2018-01-08 19:49 (UTC)

[ Chyler is chasing the dog. Rather, she's following the dog, after paying for what it took from one of the stores. She doesn't like the idea of an animal being out on the streets and hungry. She saw too many animals made homeless on Mamore, and too many of them that were too aggressive to be helped. She's more used to packs of feral dogs than she is one tame-looking dog on its own. She's used to having to watch out for dogs, and to keep her distance from cats who might be sick or savage.

It's a novelty, the animals here. Like so many other things. Not all of them are friendly, and she's still cautious, but if this one can be helped... she's going to try.

She's also well-trained enough to keep up without getting out of breath. ]

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