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who: Ava and Bucky
what: Late-night meetings at a gun range. You know, the usual.
when: After the failed attempts at first aid
where: The gun range
warnings: I'll add if needed!

[Ava doesn't particularly sleep well, as a rule. Too many nightmares, too scared of her nightmares, of what they could mean for the people around her. So she sleeps fitfully, steals it when she can find it. And there are too many nights like tonight, where all that darkness gets bottled up in her throat and she has to do something. Sometimes it's sparring against shadows and dead ghosts, other times she ends up at the firing range.

She hangs the paper and then pulls the guns out of her duffle bag, checking them all carefully, setting them in front of her. She can't literally shoot the things that haunt her, but this is easy. One of the things that's all half-remembered muscle-memory and a link she'd never asked for. Finger on the trigger, that sudden break as she pulls, and her aim is deadly. There's hardly any variation in the groupings as she shoots, letting the gun drop at five shots, catching with her left hand, and her aim is still right on target.

She is a lot of things, but she isn't normal.]

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[Bucky is another one who rarely sleeps, chased by memories he'd rather be the ones forgotten whenever he closes his eyes. He's already stabbed one man thanks to being woken abruptly from one of those dreams, and his safety net is long gone now, he has nothing left but attempting to keep himself awake or isolated.

He sees her going into the gun range, distinctive even from a distance, and pads closer. He's silent when he wants to be, well trained to never be noticed, and he watches as she shows just how deadly she can be when she wants to be. HYDRA's training, no doubt. So that part of her story wasn't a lie.

It's as she's reloading that he drops down next to her, only a couple of feet away, blending into the shadows in a dark hoodie and black gloves.]

Pretty sure this place is closed.

[He's good, enough that she tenses, and for that first moment, before she chokes it down, her eyes are a little flat, nowhere near as soft as she was in the forest. But her hands only jerk so much, her fingers clutching against the clip, and that ingrained battle math calculates the angles as she puts a name to the voice and lets the shadows filter away.

But she recognizes his voice, and the moment's gone like it was never there. Forces herself to smile as she looks over at him, finishes reloading. It's a Glock 19, and she sets it down for the moment.]

I think you're right. But then what are you doing here?

[Her voice is even, a little light now, as if she was particularly concerned about whether it was open or not. She preferred it this way-- no one to watch. Or not many people, at least.]

Edited 2017-10-01 19:14 (UTC)

[He sees that change, he understands it, and it's the reason he dropped in like this in order to see her reaction without a chance to hide it. She does cover it quite well in only a few seconds, though.]

I come here a lot, besides, I was following you.

[Will it bother her to know that he had been watching for a while? He's watching her closely now to see.]

I wanted to talk to you again.

[There's a look there, not quite distress, but she tries to clock her movements, put together how long he could have been following her, the angles. It's another reason she dislikes the city. Too many people, and for someone like James, he's too good. But she'd always been better at tracking than the reverse.

It doesn't bother her exactly, but it does make her feel vulnerable in a visceral way she's not exactly a fan of.]

Find out anything interesting?

[She doesn't expect that he'll tell her if he did, but she's trying to be social here. She smiles more genuinely when he says he wanted to talk to her again. That was good, if maybe a little surprising.]

I'm glad.

[He understands that look because he would feel the same way if their positions were reversed. It means that he is more inclined to keep believing the stories she's told him are true, and that she's an escapee and not a current operative trying to lure him into a false sense of security.

He just shrugs at the question, not about to divulge how long he watched her for or what he saw. It wasn't actually that long, but he might follow her again sometime.]

Are you like me?

[The hardest question first. Soft in the darkness.]

[She's quiet after that question, one she'd hoped to avoid, but it's soft there in the darkness between them.]

Maybe.

[Another pause, a tilt of her head, her eyes down on the gun in her hand because it's easier. As if they don't both know there's more to that answer.]

There was a Russian military project designed to make young operative and put them in place with most of the major governments and intelligence organizations in the world. People they could control.

[She leaves out some of the details, but the things she tells him are true.]

[He watches her, unyielding and unwilling to break focus, even though he knows that if the situation were reversed that it would make him uncomfortable. He has to know these things, they itch under his skin.]

You have the serum?

[His voice gets hoarse and much quieter, as if there might be spies even here.]

Did they program you?

[She understands the need to know. Why it's important. It's part of why she's honest.]

Hydra wiped me, and I didn't find any files on what exactly they did to me. But they did-- something. I remember pieces of the experiments.

[And then there's those words, and her posture changes, tenses, and her answer comes in a rough whisper. It's not hard to hear in her tone how much the words bother her. They come in Russian without even thinking about it; though whether from nerves or a further attempt to keep it secret, is harder to tell.]

I don't know. I know they programmed the others.

Edited 2017-10-01 22:58 (UTC)

[He twitches when she switches to Russian, though of course he understands her. Worse, he understands not knowing if she's been programmed, because he has the same issue. Oh, he knows it's in there, but he doesn't know what all of it is, what might be lurking behind any innocuous phrase.]

Then how can you trust yourself living among them?

[He very deliberately sticks to English, trying to hold control.]

How do you know you won't be triggered?

[It takes her a moment, but she takes a breath, and when she speaks again it's English, but quiet, careful and slow.]

I don't really. Trust myself.

[She sets the gun down, leans into the edge a little as she looks up at Bucky. Her blue eyes a little sad, a little shadowed. She knows she can't be trusted, knows that she's dangerous, the people she has and will hurt, but that feels like too much to put into the air between them.]

Someone-- pointed out that maybe the best place if I didn't trust myself was with people that could stop me.

[She shakes her head, shrugs her shoulders, small and more damaged than she usually admitted to. The fire had been bad for her on several levels, but the other James had talked her into staying. That's still confusing for her.]

I have no way of knowing what could be a trigger. I know that I'm dangerous.

[He understands that reasoning, it's why he began to spend more time around people when Clark had been here. That had been his safety net, the person who could definitely stop him if things got out of hand.

He doesn't have that now.

But if she's content that the people she stays with could stop her, then he has no right to judge her decision to live her life among people. Maybe it'll actually help her in the end, it's hard to say.]

Good.

[He retreats a step or two, giving her the out for this conversation if she needs it.]

I don't think I could help you, I don't know how to stop myself being dangerous either.

[She's not precisely content with it. She worries sometimes, that they couldn't. Not without her hurting them, and she's not sure she could live with that once the dust settled. But James-- the other James-- he said she wouldn't hurt him, that she could hold him to it, so she trusts him, even if sometimes she wonders.

But he knows and he still wants her there, and if she trusts anyone to find a way, it's Steve Rogers, so most of the time she trusts it. But on dark nights when her nightmares still curl too close to the surface, she's a bit less comfortable with the idea.

He retreats, but she doesn't take the escape he gives her, a subtle willingness to continue. Even if there is that tension that itches between her shoulderblades, it's not too uncomfortable.]

I know you're dangerous. [The unspoken: we both are.] But I don't think you're scary anymore.

[Fear was a choice. She didn't want to avoid him, didn't see him as some ghost in the dark.]

[He doesn't know what to do with that, but for some reason it loosens a tiny knot inside his chest. He doesn't smile, he rarely does that any more, yet his expression does soften slightly.]

I don't want to be scary.

[So that's good.]

I'm not what they made me any more, sounds like you're not either. Maybe one day we can figure out what we are, as well as what we're not.

[He might not smile, but his expression softens, and she's sharp enough to catch it. She smiles in response, nods to his words.]

I only thought you were scary when I thought they might send you after me. Mostly I wanted you to get away.

[After Hydra had taken the Academy and the hellicarriers had come down and she hadn't known what side he'd ended up on, just the news reports.

She nods in quiet agreement.]

I hope so. Do you- know what you want to be?

[She doesn't, not really. She used to think she wanted to be a hero. Save people. Now she's not sure it's that clear-cut.]

[He doesn't say the obvious, that if he'd been sent after her then she would already be dead. The other people that HYDRA had made to be Soldiers were good, but he had always been the best at what he did. It's why he was their main asset.

The question is one he's been asking himself for a long time, what he wants to be, and so he nods.]

I want to be James Barnes.

[She knows. She understood what he was, and knew that if he found her the odds would have been stacked against her; he'd have made sure of it. Because she remembers Odessa and the nuclear engineer, even if they aren't her memories, remembers a scar she doesn't have.

But she smiles at his response. That's good, she thinks.]

The man in the museum? Or.. someone else? What does the name mean to you?

[He asked his questions, so she asks hers, although hers are softer they're still important: maybe he can't show her not to be dangerous. But she has questions about identity, about who she is, and what she's supposed to be. Things she hasn't told him because they're harder to explain.]

[It's not a good thing to meet someone else who understands what these issues are; what had been done to him should never have been done to someone else, these are experiences that should never have been shared. But here she is, and he can't deny that she's earned her questions in return.]

I'm not sure, I'm still working that out.

[He shrugs, at least attempting to be honest.]

I think it just means being free.

[She nods, listens as he speaks, and she empathizes with the fact of still working it out; she is too. They'd made her something less than human, and then tried to make her someone else, because she wasn't a person at all. Moving forward past that in the last couple years on the heels of tragedy has been hard.

She'd realized, once she'd started running, that at the Academy she'd been more or less just letting different people tell her who she was. People that hadn't ended up being very different at all.]

I like that. Being free, it's.. good.

[Her tone is a little wistful. She misses Brooklyn, but it's something she doesn't feel she can really ever have back.]

Yeah.

[He hesitates a moment, but perhaps she stands more of a chance of understanding than anyone else would.]

Scary, though. Knowing that the choices you make are on you, that anyone who gets hurt really is on your shoulders.

--yeah. [The sentiment hits her hard and she pauses, quiets for a moment. The words aren't always easy, and this is something she hasn't talked about to anyone. Not even the other Bucky, or Tony, or Steve.]

I've made mistakes. I got someone killed. [Her voice is small for a moment, unable to even say his name outloud.]

Then I misjudged my ability to stay in control, and they're both-- my fault.

That happens.

[She's not the only one, he's made those sorts of mistakes as well. Mostly when he had first been on the run, when his sense of Bucky and the Soldier were far more blurred than they are now.]

You have to make amends however you can, even if it feels futile.

I'm trying.

[There's a slight shrug of her shoulders. She's started working out in the Abandoned City, trying to build something instead of tear it all down. It's a bit out of her league, but it's something. Effort.]

I'm just not sure, how to make it so it makes a difference.

[It feels like there's a difference. Between doing good things, and finding something that could possibly amend the mistakes. Even here, with the people she hurt? It gets under her skin. It doesn't stop her from trying, but it's a little too much, sometimes.]

Edited 2017-10-20 05:28 (UTC)

[He watches her for a moment, brows drawn together.]

You're trying to make a difference to the wrong people. You're never going to make a difference for the people you hurt or killed, they're gone, you can't change that. The difference is for other people.

[It's how he manages to keep going.]

I stop some kid getting mugged, maybe it doesn't erase that I murdered ten other kids like him, but it makes a difference to that kid.

[She's quiet for a moment, but she nods, because it's honestly an answer to the question she's been wrestling with. How do you make a difference when you can't take things back, can't change what's happened? James gives her at least part of an answer for that.]

Yeah. I.. think you're right. I guess the only people you can make a difference to are the living, in the end.

[There's a touch of a slightly awkward smile, but she's genuine as she looks up at him.]

Thank you.

[It's a bit uncomfortable to be thanked by her, when she seems to be the one that has her shit together so much more than he does.]

You don't need to thank me.

[Aka, please don't.]

Just don't tell anyone that you've seen me, and we're even.

[It's a piece she hadn't quite put together just yet, and she's glad for it. But she nods anyway, understands the words there.]

I won't tell anyone.

[A pause, an awkward shrug of her shoulders.]

And my username's redwidow. You can just ask me, if you want to track me down.

[Not that she thinks he will, figures part of the point was watching her as much as it was getting the drop on her with a gun in her hands. But it's permission, anyway. And there's meaning to the monicker, something she still holds onto.]

[Red Widow? Interesting, so they made her to be some sort of counterpart to Black Widow? Or they modelled her off the exceptional spy herself? He hadn't known that she had any connection to HYDRA beyond fighting them with the Avengers.]

Username.

[It was the most anonymous thing he could think of for his handle when he arrived.]

Don't use it unless it's an emergency.

[She smiles at that, and nods. It's about as anonymous as you can get, she understands the urge. She'd kept hers as what it was because it had been the only real piece of identity she had left and she didn't want to give that up. So she owned it.]

Alright. Only in emergencies.

[Which probably means she wont call him first, considering Ava's definition of an emergency is pretty high, but he offered it, and that matters.

She nods quietly and starts putting the gun and the clips in her bag, taking out her sketchbook instead. Her only real hobby, and she liked sketching the buildings at night without people around. Helped her get out of her head, made it easier to get to sleep, sometimes.]

I'll see you around.

[The sketchbook makes his heart ache a bit, art always makes him think of Steve, but at least he has implicit permission to escape this situation now that they've talked and it went... not bad.

He doesn't say anything else, there's nothing else to say, he just turns and walks away.]

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