riverviewlogs | [closed]

Entry tags:

[closed]

who: Bucky & Ava, Ivar, Natasha
what: Memory share.
when: During the event
where: Dreamscapes mostly, maybe some in-person threads around the city.
warnings: Violence, brainwashing, Winter Soldier things.

[ooc: Prompts below. Nothing open but hit me up at

nekky if you want something with Bucky during the event or just generally in October.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I'm sorry.

[She isn't worried about seeing it so much as she is about what this means for him. Even if being able to talk, interact with people as memories play is better than it being something like the Quantum link she'd had once, she knows that doesn't make it okay. She doesn't try to play it down, just crosses to stand closer to him.

She pays more attention to Bucky in his pajamas, the way he stands, how he holds himself, and she's sure this isn't easy for him. But she can't help soaking up the details of his memories. She's had a lot of you shouldn't be seeing this moments lately, and she wishes there was a way to just walk away. But there never is. She wishes there was something she could offer. She settles for moving to stand next to him, letting her shoulder bump against his arm softly, a tentative touching/not-touching as they stand in the dream.

For better or worse, he's not alone, and she tries to be supportive. He's always been there for her.]

[His posture is closed off, arms crossing over his chest, and his face goes as blank as the Soldier's. There isn't any real escaping this memory, he knows that by now, so he doesn't bother telling her to leave or to close her eyes. It won't matter. He hates this, some of his worst moments laid bare for others' eyes.

Steve holds up the glowing cube, his expression intense beneath the cowl. Remember who you are. The flash of light is blinding, but brief, and the Winter Soldier's eyes go wide. He sinks to his knees with a heavy thud, screaming, clutching at his head like it's on fire.

Bucky only goes rigid, unnaturally still, watching himself from a few years ago, his entire life of horrors playing out in front of his eyes.]

[Having been on the receiving end of this herself, she understands what it feels like. But it hadn't been her worst memories, just some of the really bad ones. Red Room things she didn't even normally quite remember. Bucky's body keeping her from seeing it as she screamed in the background. Not the same, but she hates this too, hates feeling like she's complicit in hurting him.

She doesn't know how not to watch, to not soak in the details. The cube (the Tesseract?) and the look on Steve's face under the cowl of his uniform. The words and the flash of light and how he falls. It's almost familiar to her, in a strange way.

That moment in a shitty motel room, where they held hands and the light surged and everything that had been leaking over the past two years became one thing. Everything all at once. She remembers the pain, searing until she couldn't separate what hurt from what didn't, and that flow of memories that became so much more.

She'd been half-expecting it then, and it had still been hard on her. She can only imagine this would have been so, so much worse. And the memories--]

He gave you back your memories.

[Her voice is soft, caring, trying to bridge the gap. She doesn't want him to have to carry this alone. If she has to watch, she can at least try, anyway.]

[An entire life flashes before the Soldier's eyes, the good and the bad hopelessly intertwined, and Bucky remembers how it had felt. It had been toomuchtoomuchtoomuch all at once, crowding out every other coherent thought. He almost doesn't remember when he touched the Cube and vanished, ran away to the only place he'd ever called home.

The vision reminds him, acutely. Camp Lehigh is long-abandoned, run down, devoid of all but Bucky Barnes' ghosts. The Soldier is no longer the Soldier, and he breaks down into body-wracking sobs, curled up tight against a dilapidated building.]

Yeah. It never happened like this for- the other Bucky. He remembered things gradually.

[She watches him, and there's something similar to it. Watching how he curls in on himself and sobs. She shifts as she stands next to him, wants to offer something to make it better, but she's never been good at that. The words he says are easier, even if there are truths that still catch in her chest that lurk behind her own.]

He's still working on it.

[Words said soft and quiet. There's something a little familiar to the tone, a little sweet to the curve of her lips that is too sad to be a smile. But she remembers the fact that when she'd been pulled into James' memories (the other one) it hadn't all been bad. It had been Bucky showing Steve how to dance in a small room, and the music from the phonograph, teasing and laughter.

But she remembers how awed he'd been, like it was a fragile snowflake about to melt if he touched it. And she has her own memories of him, even if she hadn't really talked about them, not even to either of them. It's hard for her, when it's tied up in a complicated ball of the emotions of a thirteen year old girl who hardly remembered anything beyond the walls of her prison.]

Does it still hurt? What happened?

[Bucky nods once, solemnly, though he can't help but think that the other is still luckier than he was. He's always felt a little broken, maybe, but the other Barnes will maybe get to heal, with time.]

Not really. [It doesn't hurt like it did. Plenty of his memories have faded again, his brain not able to handle all of it at once and retain it. He exhales slowly as the scene goes a little more fuzzy around the edges; he doesn't remember too well, what he did immediately after this. He'd been too upset, in too much pain.] I remembered everything. You know how they say before you die, your whole life flashes before your eyes?

That's how it was with me and Natasha, too.

[She finally volunteers that piece of it, of how it had happened, looking at him sideways. There's a sad smile as she sighs, and looks up at him a little shyly to meet his eyes. She understands. She knows that it's different, but she does understand what that's like. What that feels like. All that memory.]

Every piece of her, pieces of what they took from me when they wiped me. It felt like it burned until I couldn't tell what hurt and what didn't, like it was just- so much.

[So many parallels.] It's not the same. But I know a little bit of what that's like.

[It's hard for him to think that anyone might understand even a fraction of what it was like, but he nods briefly anyway. He doesn't have the energy to go down that conversational path. These dreams have left him feeling wrung out and physically exhausted.]

It's too much for anybody. [He finally agrees, voice quiet and a little rough. The memory goes fuzzy and indistinct. He doesn't remember what exactly happened next, just has a general timeline of what he did in those first days.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[closed]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject