James Buchanan Barnes (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lefthandfree) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thisavrou_log2018-01-05 12:33 am
lefthandfree) wrote in thisavrou_log2018-01-05 12:33 am
Entry tags:
two idiots, one tube
Who: James Buchanan Barnes (lefthandfree) and Steve Rogers (paragon)
When: sometime after Steve's arrival, when most people are doing the sleep thing
Where: cryo wing
What: midnight strolls usually don't end up in cryo but it's fine don't worry about it
Warnings: word vomit and probably some angst later, nothing crazy
He has never really been the sort to wallow. With all the responsibilities he’d taken upon himself even before the war, carrying on has become as natural as breathing. There’s always things to do, jobs that need fulfilling. Since arriving, it’s been no different, Bucky falling quickly into choosing responsibility over the greenhouse early on. He’s helped, he thinks. Done good. Made things easier for others and made a few friends along the way. No one knows the Winter Soldier here, and that alone has been the greatest blessing, knowing he never has any need to hide his face, even as impulsive as it remains to hide his name and existence from before.
Overall, Bucky’s taken to it all quite well. When he isn’t busy working in the greenhouse, checking in on Tony, or reading up on this universe he’s stuck in, he doesn’t find himself completely driven by his guilt in the way he’d felt back on Earth. Not that the thoughts haven’t surfaced from time to time, but things have been a lot easier, Wanda still being around for support if he needs it. There’s some catharsis too, in being able to interact with Tony freely without knowing he’s loathed, but he can’t help but wonder what might happen when Tony does learn the truth, if everything he tries here may still be for naught.
None of these stop the nightmares though. They were common already. Why would things change now when he's only been relocated? Wandering the halls aimlessly has become habit, to chase away demons, he tells himself, but he knows he’s actually seeking them out, the guilt impossible to ignore entirely and the necessity to acknowledge them great, just so that he can put the feelings away and continue on the next day. This is how he finds himself in the cryo wing again, caught between an old wish and his moral responsibility.
In another life, he could have wanted to be here simply out of curiosity, trying to dissect the functionality, understand it, replicate it in some other form. But he traded in his higher education for his sisters’ futures, wanting them to have the world in their hands whenever he’d inevitably part from their sides. He never anticipated it’d come so quickly with the war. Here, now, he just wonders what it would mean if he did go under again. If he figured out how to operate the devices and shut himself away, would any of the last few months have mattered? Would people even wonder?
It reminds him again, the way Steve had hesitated, looked on at him expectantly, wanting him to say no when he’d asked Bucky if he was sure. There was no way he could, just as the look made it impossible for him to say yes too, but he’d found a way to make Steve let go anyway, cruel as forcibly ripping away his presence with something they can’t control is. He doesn’t regret the decision even the slightest amount, but he isn’t pleased with himself either. He never is when he hurts Steve. For that matter, he never can be when Steve’s involved anymore it seems.
His hand grazes the glass of one of the cryo units as he passes by. It’s nothing like the one he’d been placed in at T’Challas’s, but it’s similar in ways that make Bucky wonder if cryonic technology develops similarly across universes. There’s beauty in such a thought, an inherent design that exists simply in the idea. If universal concepts can be a thing, maybe flying cars are still plausible on Earth, and he’ll get to fly one someday like he’s wanted to since childhood.
Really, it’s good that no one asks him what he’s thinking about half the time because the truth is that it’s mostly innocuous stuff like this.
lefthandfree) and Steve Rogers (paragon)When: sometime after Steve's arrival, when most people are doing the sleep thing
Where: cryo wing
What: midnight strolls usually don't end up in cryo but it's fine don't worry about it
Warnings: word vomit and probably some angst later, nothing crazy
He has never really been the sort to wallow. With all the responsibilities he’d taken upon himself even before the war, carrying on has become as natural as breathing. There’s always things to do, jobs that need fulfilling. Since arriving, it’s been no different, Bucky falling quickly into choosing responsibility over the greenhouse early on. He’s helped, he thinks. Done good. Made things easier for others and made a few friends along the way. No one knows the Winter Soldier here, and that alone has been the greatest blessing, knowing he never has any need to hide his face, even as impulsive as it remains to hide his name and existence from before.
Overall, Bucky’s taken to it all quite well. When he isn’t busy working in the greenhouse, checking in on Tony, or reading up on this universe he’s stuck in, he doesn’t find himself completely driven by his guilt in the way he’d felt back on Earth. Not that the thoughts haven’t surfaced from time to time, but things have been a lot easier, Wanda still being around for support if he needs it. There’s some catharsis too, in being able to interact with Tony freely without knowing he’s loathed, but he can’t help but wonder what might happen when Tony does learn the truth, if everything he tries here may still be for naught.
None of these stop the nightmares though. They were common already. Why would things change now when he's only been relocated? Wandering the halls aimlessly has become habit, to chase away demons, he tells himself, but he knows he’s actually seeking them out, the guilt impossible to ignore entirely and the necessity to acknowledge them great, just so that he can put the feelings away and continue on the next day. This is how he finds himself in the cryo wing again, caught between an old wish and his moral responsibility.
In another life, he could have wanted to be here simply out of curiosity, trying to dissect the functionality, understand it, replicate it in some other form. But he traded in his higher education for his sisters’ futures, wanting them to have the world in their hands whenever he’d inevitably part from their sides. He never anticipated it’d come so quickly with the war. Here, now, he just wonders what it would mean if he did go under again. If he figured out how to operate the devices and shut himself away, would any of the last few months have mattered? Would people even wonder?
It reminds him again, the way Steve had hesitated, looked on at him expectantly, wanting him to say no when he’d asked Bucky if he was sure. There was no way he could, just as the look made it impossible for him to say yes too, but he’d found a way to make Steve let go anyway, cruel as forcibly ripping away his presence with something they can’t control is. He doesn’t regret the decision even the slightest amount, but he isn’t pleased with himself either. He never is when he hurts Steve. For that matter, he never can be when Steve’s involved anymore it seems.
His hand grazes the glass of one of the cryo units as he passes by. It’s nothing like the one he’d been placed in at T’Challas’s, but it’s similar in ways that make Bucky wonder if cryonic technology develops similarly across universes. There’s beauty in such a thought, an inherent design that exists simply in the idea. If universal concepts can be a thing, maybe flying cars are still plausible on Earth, and he’ll get to fly one someday like he’s wanted to since childhood.
Really, it’s good that no one asks him what he’s thinking about half the time because the truth is that it’s mostly innocuous stuff like this.
no subject
And thoughts of Bucky aren't far off right now. They'd be within easy reach anyway — it hasn't even been an hour since T'challa had spoken to him of peace, something Steve's known little of even before the war and has difficulty putting faith in. He can give it to T'challa, though, and Bucky. Even if he can't help but feel that the better option is to stay awake and fight. It hadn't been about letting go so much as having no choice without taking that choice out of Bucky's hands, where it hasn't rested for a good seventy years. It's not for Steve to make.
And that was still grating on his soul even with the distraction of feeling like he was falling, then as the sensation righted itself, until well after he'd opened the list of names to see Bucky's on it, among others'. That it's his given name doesn't exactly give Steve pause — it's what his mother had called him, after all, familiar in its own way, and an occasionally necessary formality as much a part of their shared childhood in Brooklyn as anything — but it doesn't give him comfort or understanding either, any more than this room that's as foreign a war memorial as Steve's ever seen. Tony's name further down the list doesn't help matters. He's glad for the reason to leave.
But it occurs to him as he does so that if Bucky's really here, Steve can't exactly go knocking on doors to find him, and maybe that's why he soon finds himself in the cryo wing instead, not letting himself stop elsewhere on the quiet station, taking it all in as a matter of strategy rather than art. Maybe it's that his last choice is still fresh in Steve's mind, and that's also where he finds it harder to imagine Bucky sleeping peacefully behind once of those doors than somewhere it's harder for Steve to track him down.
So it's not really a surprise when he sees him there, hand pulling away from the glass, but there are plenty of other things he can and does feel. "What are you doin' here?" he asks after swallowing, his voice carrying over the several feet between them. There's decades more behind the question that he couldn't disguise even if he tried, and less confidence than he'd like to admit that Bucky's thoughts are turned in the innocuous direction they are.