riverviewlogs | turn back time;

who: Bucky and OPEN
what: Various prompts spanning Prijata, the AU, and just random things.
when: The month of June
where: Around and about
warnings: Panic attacks

notes: Because this spans pre-AU and during-AU Bucky, I don't mind if anyone wants to tag in more than once to interact with both bits. Open to new or existing CR. If there isn't a prompt you like, just PM me and I'll work one out with you!

[i: Prijata; around the abandoned city and Quarantine]

[Bucky has been delivered a lot of unexpected things for the Prijata celebrations, gifts from people he never expected to get anything from, and gifts from anonymous sources. They're all thoughtful - food vouchers, clothes vouchers, survival equipment - but there's one gift that really takes him by surprise. A dog. An actual dog. The letter that comes with it states that this is a service dog designed to help veterans, she's his to borrow for six months and then either give her back or take her full time.

The things is...

He has no idea how to take care of a dog. It's not something he had as a kid, and the Soldier certainly wasn't given pets. He knows common sense things, like that she'll need to be fed and walked, but that's about it. Which is why he can be found in one of several places:

a) skulking around the various pet shops of Quarantine with a black lab trotting at his side.
b) sitting out in the outskirts of the abandoned town, throwing a stick idly for her and watching her return it.
c) awkwardly hoisting said dog into his arms so that he can climb the side of a building.]

[ii: Good and bad; at night down an alleyway; cw: panic attacks]

[Maybe it's being given the dog that's meant for a specific purpose that brings it to the surface, but Bucky has been dwelling more and more on his time as the Soldier. It leaves him on edge, tenser than usual, and less willing to mingle with the crowds. He doesn't sleep for as long as he can, unwilling to leave himself vulnerable to attack, but in the end he's only human.

Whenever he does manage to get some sleep, his dreams are far from pleasant, enough that he's not exactly a silent sleeper. The occasional moan might draw attention to his hiding spot, and anyone who tries to disturb him will find that he's not in the mood for it at all.]

[iii: Sergeant Barnes; AU plot; the park]

[It's absolutely amazing!

Of course he's been here for a few months now, but it's still mind boggling that he could be living in a place where there were people from all sorts of places and times. It's like one of those dime novels he used to read, all aliens and fanciful technology. He can still barely believe cell phones are a thing, he can only imagine how much this might have enhanced the war effort back home.

The only problem is... he doesn't seem to have a place to stay. All of his stuff was down an alleyway with him, and that's not exactly ideal. He's dressed in world war two uniform, having not quite got round to getting changed yet, with the insignia of a Sergeant clearly visible. Though he's obviously still Bucky, same face and same body, there are differences that might make him hard to identify. He's clean shaven, he doesn't walk with the wariness of a predator stalking prey, and he's smiling.

He even raises a hand in a friendly and lazy sort of greeting, friend or newcomer.]

[iv: Wildcard; anywhere; anytime]

[Got something you want to do with Bucky or Sergeant Barnes? Put it here, and let's do it!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Yes sir, it wasn't but a week ago I was in Boston.

[The twilight was thickening around him, lavender like the way honeysuckle smells, the saddest scent in the world, as he looked down into his shadow there on the water's surface, the current moving but not pushing his shadow along with it two shadows hers higher and then the water was closer, swallowing him whole in its dark quiet maw with the flatirons a final comfort in his pockets. Then he remembers the bright white gaze of the hospital, the white noise lapping at him, and he was in time again.]

Then you've got a lot left to learn. The people here are from all different worlds and times, like something out of a novel, so you should get used to not recognising the uniform a man wears.

[That's the least crazy thing here!]

I was out Italy way, fighting.

Yes sir, I reckon I have.

[Boston itself had been a foreign land, the air hanging over it somehow made not from the same components as the air in Mississippi. Here, he is an alien once more, or everyone around him seems an alien. His expression is puzzled then.]

What did we get in a war with Italy for?

[He scrubs a hand through his hair, exhaling in an exaggerated manner.]

I told you, it's a heck of a thing to explain. It ain't just us against Italy, there's a lot of nations and countries all fighting, and some parts of some countries are against the other parts. It's a World War.

[He is quiet as he tries to comprehend war on such a scale, spread across the globe like a thick smothering cloud of smoke. The great war that lingers in the conscious of his time, of his people in particular, is of course the Civil War, in which only their own country tore itself asunder and turned each half against the other.]

My father once said that no war is ever won, because the battlefield reveals only man's folly. [He says this because he does not know what else to offer.] Of course, his father served as a general in the Confederate Army, served under General P. G. T. Beauregard before he got his arm shot off and was made general himself.

[The Confederate Army? That was much further back in history than Bucky was expecting, and he can't help the way his eyebrows shoot up. Not least because of the side of the Civil War that they had fought on.]

That was a sight back even for me, and most people here consider that I'm from the past. It's 1943 for me, November.

[He is no stranger to that look, the sort of disbelief stretched by raised eyebrows that he has seen on his classmates in Boston, brought on by seeing the remnants of something they would have only read about. What did your granddaddy hate negroes so much for? What did he go and fight a doomed war for?]

Well, that was my grandfather's time, sir. Lee recognized he was done for forty-five years ago, and that's that.

[But was anything ever done? A brief pause as he calculates the years, with 1943 not far on the horizon yet beyond his sights nonetheless, because it is no easier to imagine ten years hence, twenty years hence, than a hundred years stretching forward in time. All of it is some nebulous place he would never know.]

I did meet a lady who says it was the year 2132 before she wound up here. 2132, can you imagine?

Not even slightly.

[He allows the subject change easily. For all he knows, some of his ancestors might have fought in the Civil War, though he doubts it, the Barnes clan has been from around New York since they came in from Ireland. It doesn't matter, one man shouldn't be held accountable for what his dad or grandad did before him.]

It's like something out of one of those futuristic novels on the street corners, I used to buy them before I got shipped out. All flying cars and alien women.

Yessir, it's awful hard to imagine.

[He glances away from this stranger with whom he had fallen into conversation quite by accident, idly watching the people who skirt around them on their way to wherever it is they are going. Then he does not know why he asks his next question, but he is compelled to do so all the same.]

Do you like it here better than where you were, sir?

Well, there's less people shooting at me.

[He smiles, but there's a disquiet to his eyes now, and less of the joviality that he'd had before.]

But no. I have something important to do back home, and people that I've left waiting for me. I know they say that I felt displaced or something, not that I remember that, but I guess everyone feels that way sometimes in a war. Doesn't mean I'd rather not go back.

[Not for the first time, it strikes him that in this city of unbelonging there are those who would readily return to that which they had left behind, who possess the wholehearted conviction that they not only can but must do so.]

That's mighty admirable of you, sir. I'm sorry that you wound up here.

Hey now, there's no need to call me sir, it's just plain Bucky.

[This kid might be a bit serious and intense, but he seems nice.]

And I'm not too sorry, it's going to make one helluva story when I get back, don't you think?

All right then - Bucky. I'm Quentin.

[His own name he gives as an afterthought, then he tilts his head, weighing a question.]

Do you think folks will believe you when you tell them where you'd gone off to?

turn back time;

cw: allusion to suicide

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shh this is how he always looked, what are you talking about