[open] old familiar places

[ostavil]

WHO: Bucky Barnes + Open
WHEN: January
WHAT: Re-Arrival
WHERE: Streets and then the inn
WARNINGS: TBD



Bucky has seen a lot of shit in his time and when he'd come to Gazin the first time, he'd gone to the inn and cased the place as best he could. Now, returning, he knows a little more than most. He still doesn't understand why he keeps getting chosen to come here. Is there some hole in the universe, some tear he keeps stumbling into across the street from the fruit stand? Is he here because he needs to hide from the world and Wakanda isn't a good enough place? He has no idea why this place keeps calling to him, keeps drawing him in. He has no idea why it seems to want him to return for a second time.

He pats himself down and realizes this time it's at least given him knives to work with. No guns, but he's not shocked. This is a place of horses and blacksmiths and guns are hundreds of years into the future. He's used to being the throwback but in Gazin, he's from the future. He feels like some kind of exhibition at the Stark Expo or some shit and that's so long ago it's a distant, distant memory. It's one only recently returned to him, too, and he smiles at what his idea of the future had been back then. Little did he know.

Just as before, he makes his way along the main road and toward the inn. This is the center of this little town and the place to get the most information. He knows a little more than last time about the layout but he doesn't know which people are still here, which have changed, and which are new like he'd been the last time he came into town. He still takes a table that's a little shadowed so he can watch rather than be seen but at least he knows what he's about this time.

Comments

[ofwovenstone]

Cassandra has been feeling... restless, as of late. So she’s been riding and exploring and mapping the area, on top of her continued delving into who wants an Ember unicorn and WHY (and when, how, but one thing at a time). There’s the strange symbols and glow in the forest from a month or two ago, but that has been frustrating in its lack of answers. Lack of anything, regarding what it is or what had caused it. Other than the strange woman that had heralded the strange goings-on.

But the glow is still there.

For now, though, she’s cold and looking to thaw a little by the fire in the inn. Shaking the snow from her white-streaked curls, she scans the inn with blue-grey eyes, taking in who all’s there and the atmosphere of the place.

Then she pauses.

There’s a familiar face at a table in the shadows. One she’d not thought to see again. She’s gotten so accustomed to losing people. Losing friends. Losing lovers. Losing family. She’s never thought that she might... have someone returned. She cannot help how her face lights up at the sight of him, and she wastes no time in wending her way through the inn towards him.

There’s a part of her that knows better, that knows better than to believe that he’ll know her, that he’ll remember her, from his time here before. But she hopes. Pelor, how she hopes.

[ostavil]

There's no mistaking her. Her hair is white streaked, she has the same set to her chin and spark in her eyes as she had the last time he'd met her. It's Cassandra, in the flesh, and at least one person is here that he'd left behind the last time he'd disappeared from this place.

Hardly a social person, Bucky decides to step out of his comfort zone and wave her toward his table. "Cassandra!" he calls out, just loud enough to be heard across the room, and tilts her a smile that's a shade closer to the one he might have given her back when he was his old self in '45.

"Of all the bars, you come into mine?"

[ofwovenstone]

At his wave, at his calling her name something eases in her chest. He knows her. He remembers his time here. Exhaling in relief, Cassandra wastes no time in crossing the distance between them, her grin lighting up the room.

Oh. She knows that quote! Thanks to her time in the City. She huffs a soft laugh at it, torn between giving him a hug and not wanting to make him uncomfortable. It’s enough that he’s HERE, that he knows her. “Yes I do,” she retorts, teasing. “And I am very glad to see you.”

[ostavil]

"I'm glad to see you," Bucky says, emphasis on the 'you.' Seeing people he knows and is comfortable with makes him think this place is less of a trick. It could still be one, sure, but he doesn't think it is when it lets him have friends and know people instead of nameless, faceless drones.

"You been doing all right since I was here last time?" he asks, wanting to know just how much things have changed since he left and come back. He doesn't know how time passes, exactly, and wants to get a gauge for it. How better to do that than to talk to someone he knows?

[ofwovenstone]

That he’s as glad to see her as she is to see him means the world to her. It’s not something Cassandra’s used to, although she’s slowly getting better about it. More accustomed. Usually she’s just her brother’s sister, not truly wanted or needed around. Only since she left Whitestone has that changed.

“All right enough,” she replies. She always is. Even when she isn’t. “There was an odd... occurrence a few months ago. But other than that, it’s been pretty much the same.”

[ostavil]

"Odd? What kind of odd?"

Bucky's life has become a series of odd occurrences, considering the crowd he runs with and the fact that Earth has become a hotbed for other civilizations to just invade. Still, he doesn't know what odd in Gazin would count as and he's eager to hear Cassandra's answer. Is it something he or Steve could have helped?

[backin_theworld]

[ cont. from here ]

Steve listens, noting something in his best friend's voice that got him curious.

"Top tier, eh?" he says, watching Bucky for a short moment before grinning. "You don't say that about too many people. I'm sorry she disappeared."

Steve pauses, considering as he regards the other man.

"I know in places like this, nothing is certain though. Maybe she'll be brought back in."

[ostavil]

"She was good. A nurse," Bucky explains. "So maybe she'll come back. You can never have too many of those around."

Bucky narrows his eyes at Steve's remark "you never know in places like this." What does he know about that?

"Where have you been that people come and go?"

[backin_theworld]

There's something more to the story than that, but even before Bucky redirects the conversation back on him, Steve decides to back off on the questions about Claire from Hells Kitchen.

He considers the answer, knowing that talking about it might very well open up the floor for questions that he knows now wasn't his best friend, but the soldier that HYDRA made him into. Steve wouldn't lie, but he could leave certain parts of the last world he was in.

"Place called Bete Noire," Steve starts. "City that seemed to influence in pretty dark ways. Same deal though, people were brought in and then left, only to come back again."

[ostavil]

"It's...strange. I'm used to losing people. I'm used to being lost. I'm not used to that," Bucky says. "But this place made you do things? Things you didn't want to do?"

That's something he's more than familiar with, being trapped in his body while he's carrying out orders that leave black marks on his soul. He'd never wanted to carry out orders as the Soldier but he'd been forced to and he had been locked inside his body and unable to resist it. Was this Bete Noire like that?

[backin_theworld]

Steve looks at his friend, knowing exactly what he means. Coming from what they just had, he would hate for Bucky to have to deal with influences of a darker sort all over again.

"Maybe not quite like that, but it did heighten certain moods for people. I arrived there right around the time they thawed me out in our world. And I was dealing with the grief of losing Peggy, the shock of essentially time travelling 70 years into a future that looked so different than what it was."

He stops himself.

"It made all that seem so much worse than it was."

[ostavil]

"It was hard, coming out of...what they made me. Took me a while to be able to find my way. I don't even remember everything. There's a lot that's been stolen and as much as I chew on it or write in journals, I can't bring it back. The Smithsonian knows more about me than I do."

It's hard to adjust to a new world when the world you've known is radically different and he thinks that make him and Steve a little more suited to showing up to places like this than other people might be. They know what it's like to be dropped into the middle of a strange new world.

"Now we're from the future, according to this place. Absolutely medieval."

[backin_theworld]

"Yeah, well, the Smithsonian isn't here." Steve looks around, pausing a moment before letting out a soundless laugh. "Unless we're in one of those exhibits that came to life. After everything that's gone on, it wouldn't surprise me."

He supposes there's a good chance Tony is behind this and he'll be keeping his eyes peeled for anything that gives that away, but he doesn't say anything. Tony Stark is a very sensitive subject right now.

"It could be worse, though. At least you remember me now."

[ostavil]

"It's true, I do remember you. I guess that's an improvement on the usual," Bucky says. His brain is still full of holes, even if it's fewer holes than it used to be, and he wishes he could remember more of the forties when he and Steve were together last.

"Little worried that I might start remembering some of the other stuff, though," Bucky admits. "It's a dark mess in there but I guess if I can remember some of the good things, it won't be so bad."

Having Steve around might help with that - especially since he can't go and avenge the earth when they're stuck here.

[backin_theworld]

Nope, Bucky is stuck with Steve. For better or worse. He knows it's going to take some time to sort through his head, and if he thinks there's a reason to push, he'll damn well do it. But he also knows when not to and with them just arriving and their world and this world colliding, he just plans to be there for his best friend.

"We can worry about that when it happens. If it happens. There's no one here to make you compliant, right? Stay focused, Buck."

[ostavil]

"Yeah, keep on keeping on," Bucky agrees. "No one has the book and no one can control me. It's just me in my head for once."

That's something he's grateful for, honestly. For so long he's worried about what he's capable of and what damage he can cause but it seems like he's sheltered from that here. It's a nice thing, to know he can't hurt anyone on accident, and having control makes him feel more like himself than he has in a long time.

[backin_theworld]

Steve knows it won't ever be simple, but he is pretty proud of his best friend for moving forward. Or taking steps that way. Deciding to put himself back into cryostasis was a responsible move.

"And that's the way it should be," he offers a small smile. "You got me, too. Things get rough and you get too far into that head you know I'll do what I can to pull you back. Whatever it takes."

[ostavil]

"My head is its own battle," Bucky says. It's weird, knowing his greatest enemy is his own mind, but it's been his enemy long enough that he knows how to fight it. It's easier with someone like Steve here, at least, since Steve knows who he's supposed to be and the kind of man he was before HYDRA scrambled him.

"Hasn't seemed to be much of an issue here, though, but I guess that's because HYDRA hasn't figured out a way to hijack this place. It seems...purer than that. Older than HYDRA. Older than anything that's ever tried to reprogram me."

[backin_theworld]

Steve also knows it's going to be a while before his best friend gets anywhere close to being himself. But he's not going to push. That would only put Bucky further back and he's not going to be the one to do that.

Steve glances around slowly, hoping that they don't have a problem. There's a niggling at the edges of his mind that want him to be cautiously optimistic that nothing horrible is on the horizon.

"That's good," he nods. "If anyone I know needs a break, it's you. Because you're older than me."

A smirk.

[ostavil]

"Look, I'm only older by a little," Bucky says, scoffing at him. "Besides, if I wasn't older you'd have gotten beaten up even more than you already did. Or, so we say."

Bucky doesn't remember it, per se, but he repeats it to himself over and over until it's true. That makes it true, doesn't it? That makes it a memory?

"Little older but not taller anymore. The serum didn't make me any taller. I think I got cheated."

[backin_theworld]

Steve sits and thinks about the old days and just how much taller his friend was over him. Actually, everything about Bucky back then was everything he wanted to be. It was the reason he kept trying to enlist; to do what his friend was doing because that was what he believed he should be doing, too.

Somedays he wonders where life would have taken him if Dr. Erskine never gave him that chance.

"I think I'm okay with this," he laughs again. "Sort of makes up for all those times I tried to make myself taller so I didn't look like your much younger kid brother on those double dates you forced me to go on with you."

[ostavil]

"Hey, I would have taken a couple inches. Now I look like I stopped drinking milk in the tenth grade," Bucky teases. "But hey, who stands a chance next to you? Captain America, savior of the world? I'm just the guy with the gun in the background."

It's all good-natured, though, and not in the sad and wistful way he might have said it a few months back. It feels good to be something approaching his normal self even if the new normal isn't the swell guy from the 40s.