riverviewlogs | memories are what make us who we are

who: Bucky and OPEN
what: Memory sharing event (within dreams)
when: October 9th - 23rd
where: Inside dreams
warnings: Torture, forced memory loss, gore, violence, Nazis.

note: I'll be doing a new dream memory for everyone that tags in, if there are specific subjects you would like to avoid then please note them in your tag/subject line and I'll make sure to tailor the dream accordingly. This can also be used for Bucky to view return dream memories. Open to new and old CR, and you don't need to plot with me first; but if you'd prefer to then I can be reached on plurk at

bibbety

[Bucky tries not to sleep too often even when there aren't oddities happening when he closes his eyes, but even he can't stay awake forever. He's only human, after all, the serum doesn't change that much about him.

But when he closes his eyes and drifts off, he's not expecting to be standing as an observer of his dream, like it's an incredibly realistic movie, and he's certainly not expecting someone to be stood beside him looking on.]

You're not supposed to be here.

[Depending how late in the event it is, and how many people he's seen in his dreams already, that statement ranges from confusion to tight irritation in tone.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Training.

[He looks over at the other version of himself with the barest trace of pity. The other Bucky has a bluish tinge to his skin and he's trembling from head to foot, but he's still determinedly staring forwards at the opposite wall.]

Learning to withstand extremes without losing focus, ignoring the heat and cold.

[A weapon, after all, doesn't feel those things. He glances up at the ceiling and, if Ivar tracks his gaze, he'll see a little digital clock that currently reads 45:19:42.]

[Ivar follows his gaze upwards. He wonders what the clock means, but he has a more important thing to ask.]

Who did this to you?

[That was really the million dollar question, wasn't it? There had to have been someone behind Bucky who had turned him into what he'd become, those bits of coldness that Ivar saw on the surface sometimes instead of the man he tried to be.]

It wouldn't matter if I told you, you'd not have heard of them.

[He's a Viking, after all, many many years before the first Nazi and then the first HYDRA born out of their evil.]

They were an organisation that thought they knew what was best for the world.

[Ivar shakes his head. He's heard that before, spending time in the castle of an English king who thought himself above everyone else around him.]

People who think they know what's best for everyone are usually the worst ones for the job.

[He's been around too many fundamentalist Christians in his day who thought purging the world of heretics, barbarians, and everyone different from them to ever think organizations like that were a good idea.]

You're not kidding.

[He tilts his head towards the other Bucky as, all of a sudden, he falls to one knee. He's obviously suffering greatly from the cold, shivering from head to foot, and he's struggling to stay conscious.

The door slides open and a man in full uniform steps in and hauls him up, words dispassionate.

"Forty six hours before failure. Soldier, repeat the orders you were given."

Bucky swallows before he answers in a low and hoarse voice. "Stand to attention, sir.

"And are you stood to attention now?"

"No, sir."

"Then you have failed. Take him to the reprogramming chamber."]

[Ivar watches the exchange with an expression on his face that is anything but dispassionate. He knows cruelty. He's a cruel man himself when it suits his needs and purposes. But seeing it happen to someone he knows, who he's come to care about, and look up to in a sense, it's a different sort of feeling than anything else.]

You know, I'm beginning to see why you are the way you are.

[No wonder he'd been reluctant to share the details of his past with Ivar all the other times he'd asked.]

What is reprogramming?

[It doesn't sound like it's going to be pleasant.]

[He nearly doesn't answer, nearly does what he always does and deflects. But what's the point now when Ivar is about to see the truth? He deserves to be prepared for what's coming.]

It's the way they made me what I was, it's-- a machine. They strap me into it and it wipes my mind, takes away my memories. These people made me into a weapon they called the Soldier, I didn't have any other name for a long time.

[The other Bucky is escorted through the corridors and strapped into a chair with metal manacles at his wrists and ankles. He voluntarily accepts the bit between his teeth to keep him from biting his tongue off during the process, and then the electric panels come down over his face. There's a loud humming, the smell of burning flesh, and the sound of agonised screaming through the rubber bit.]

[Ivar can't find anything to say as he watches the scene before him. He's done a lot of terrible things in his life and he'll be the first to admit it. But as horrible as killing dozens of people is from a moral standpoint, he never even known that men were capable of stripping away someone's identity in such a manner.

It's the smell that gets him more than anything else, knowing that while he is being scorched on the outside, his insides are being fried in a far different way. Eventually, the battle-hardened Viking is forced to turn away. For all his cold and uncaring ways, something about the scene has touched him in a way that mere words would never have.]

That's sick. [He mutters to himself. Then he looks over at Bucky. Rarely, if ever, does Ivar show sympathy to anyone. It's a sign of weakness, one that he can't afford to show. But right now, there's something in his gaze a little bit softer as he stares at his friend.]

This answer is a lot. [It explains why Bucky is so broken on the inside. The paranoia he has, and the inability to relate to most people, even the way that he tends to run when the conversations get too uncomfortable. It all makes sense now.]

[Bucky's own expression never alters as he watches the Soldier finish being wiped and get dragged off to cryogenic freeze. The men tending him don't look at him as human, he's referred to only as the Asset, as the Weapon, as the Soldier. Never as 'he' or 'him', and they handle him with the dispassionate manner of people moving a tool from one area to another.]

I'm not that weapon any more.

[That's important for Ivar to know.]

They kept me for nearly seventy years, but I broke free about six months ago. They sent me after someone I used to know before, and he-- he wouldn't fight me, he broke through my programming and I ran. When I say I don't remember, I mean it, there's a lot of pieces that I'm still missing and I don't know all the situations that could make me dangerous again.

[Ivar goes quiet for a long while after this explanation. As Bucky has probably realized by now, when the Viking does this, it's because he's thinking hard about something, analyzing it in that strange way he has of looking at the world around him. His words come back to him in a slow fashion.]

You might not have wanted me to see any of this... but I'm glad that I did.

[Bucky had been cagey about his past for the entire time that Ivar had known him. Now he understood why. He was a man made into a weapon regaining pieces of himself a little bit at a time. For perhaps the first time, he had an inkling of just what Bucky meant as he stressed to the teen that he was dangerous.]

Nobody should have to see this.

[It's not an aggressive rebuttal though, he trusts Ivar more than most to keep this to himself and not gossip about it to others. He watches as the Soldier is put in the cryogenic freezer tube and the ice forms on the window, brow furrowed.]

But maybe now you understand. This is why you shouldn't trust me, shouldn't let me near your kid. I've killed hundreds of people; most of them innocent, some of them kids, and I never felt a thing while I was doing it.

You don't give yourself enough credit. Like you said, you're not what you were anymore.

[That's not to say Ivar hasn't ever felt threatened by Bucky, but he's seen the man develop from standoffish and closed-off into someone Ivar can call a friend. Compared to this empty shell that he's witnessed here, it's remarkable progress.]

Yeah, but I could be again.

[It's not a particularly hopeful thing to end the night on, but that's the last thing he manages to say before the dream ends and they're both unceremoniously booted awake and back into their own bodies.

He could be again.

He wonders if Ivar will remember that, and if he'll see the kid again.]

memories are what make us who we are

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