imfollowinghim | twenty eight ✪ voice & spam

[Voice, backdated to March 17]

[Bucky leaves T'Pol's body where it is. He wipes his knife on his pants, an automatic gesture that leaves another green smear of blood on his soaked uniform, and after staring at her for a moment, he walks downstairs to sit with Steve's corpse. And sits.

Maybe ten minutes later, he clicks on his communicator.]

Steve's dead.

[Bucky's voice is hollow. There's anger there, but it's smothered by the numbness he feels, the strange unreality of it all.

(It's being instinctively self protective, withdrawing instead of thinking about it. He doesn't want to think about what she'd tried to do to him, or what happened to Steve, so shutting down helps him focus. Keeps him from just staying sitting on the floor next to Steve.)]

So's T'Pol.

[The silence stretches for several seconds, even though he doesn't kill the connection.]

I need someone to take her to the infirmary. She's on deck. [I stabbed her, he thinks but doesn't say, because he can still feel her hands on his face and her thoughts on his, and he's got Steve's blood on his clothes and even though it's a more than familiar sensation, he thinks he's going to be sick.] I've got him.

[Open Spam, March 17th through 19th]

[The first thing Bucky does after bringing Steve to the infirmary is go to the inmate showers, strip off his bloody combat uniform, and stand under water that's so hot, it's almost scalding. He's practically catatonic, mouth drawn into a thin line as he just stands motionless under the hot, steaming water.

He turns up in the infirmary an hour or so later, sitting similarly motionlessly by Steve's bedside in a fresh uniform. He's got the shield next to him, clean now and leaning against the chair he's rooted himself to. He's largely unresponsive, even if people talk to him - or more accurately, his responses are just delayed, like he's shut out pretty much everything but the person in the bed in front of him - and he's got a mean five o'clock shadow going at some point. Hunger starts gnawing at him at some point, but for the first time in a really long time - maybe since the last time Steve was really, really sick - he totally ignores it. Even after the late shift starts, he doesn't move to leave. He doesn't even sleep.

(His thoughts feel sharp and brittle, like they had after Zola had been finished with him for the day and he'd been thrown back into a cell to sleep. Or try to sleep. It feels like what T'Pol had tried to do ripped a bandage off a wound that hadn't healed, and he doesn't want to fucking deal with it.)

But once Steve's up and around, Bucky vanishes. He's not in any of his usual haunts, not on the network, nowhere really.

(Thank god he's still got C-Rations in his room. 8v)]

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I don't know. [Which is just part of his insane frustration with this whole thing, he doesn't know. He feels like he fucked up.]

Someone shoved the shield through his chest.

How cute, someone's trying to scare us.

[Her voice, brittle and humorless, suggests that "cute" means "stupid and petty". It also suggests that someone is going to die tonight.]

I'm coming to help you.

I don't need help.

[He doesn't want it, either. As irrational as this is, he feels like it's his fault, that he should have been there to bail him out like he's done a million times, and he wasn't there, so Steve's dead. This is his cross to bear and he doesn't want help, doesn't want to talk to anyone, doesn't want to deal with any of this.

Part of him just really wants to destroy something.

(God, he never used to be like this, did he?)]

Then I'm just coming.

[She fully intends to be at the infirmary, even if Bucky makes her stay back. (Never does it occur to her that he might do anything more violent than that, even with two deaths piled right on top of each other. But even if it had she'd still go.)]

Where was he?

The stairs up to the deck.

[And there's still going to be blood all over the place there, and it just makes him want to vomit. He's got Steve's blood soaking his uniform, and T'Pol's, and the idea of needing to deal with Bleu or anyone else right now is just as grating, like nails on a chalkboard that just won't fucking stop.

He grits his teeth, forces himself to censor the profanity he instinctively wants to insert in what he says because she might be a friend of Steve's, but Bucky doesn't know her well, not really. Even if he did, he wouldn't want her to be there right now, wouldn't want her to see Steve like this or just deal with her, because this has been his private nightmare since he was a kid, that Steve would die when he had his back turned and he needs space. Time to decompress, and it's just made worse by everything T'Pol had inadvertently ripped open with the mind meld. He's wounded and angry and terrified, and he doesn't need near strangers hovering around until he's pulled himself together more.]

Look lady, I'm glad you're worried about him, but I'm at the end of my goddamn rope right now and the last thing I need is an audience. Back off.

[In slightly different circumstances she'd have seen any profanity Bucky threw out and done her damnedest to raise it, and would bitch that she has every right to look in on Steve. But she doesn't -- at least not compared to him, she knows. She may want to box his ears for the tone he's taking, but he's Steve's greatest friend and instead she just looses an irritated sigh.]

You let me see him and I'll get the girl.

Fine.

[And that's all he really wants to say. He doesn't actually care much about what happens to T'Pol.]

Thank you. [This time, she sounds sincere.

Retrieving T'Pol isn't a problem or even the slightest concern for her. Strangers' deaths have never bothered her and the body isn't heavy for her; she's slung over Bleu's shoulder when she walks into the infirmary, looking around for Bucky.]

[Bucky's sitting with Steve. His uniform's soaked with blood - his left side's splashed with T'Pol's green blood and his right shoulder's covered in red that's starting to turn near-black - and his expression's just as lifeless and angry as it's been since he killed T'Pol when he looks at Bleu. He still really doesn't want to deal with her, or anyone.]

Satisfied?

[Bleu lays T'Pol down on an empty bed, removing her sweater to wring the green blood from it as she crosses over to them. She looks at the blood on Bucky's uniform, red and green, and nods at him in greeting.] Is that his? Or yours too? [No judgment on the green blood; whatever happened with T'Pol is his business. Her interest could be considered concern.

She looks over Steve, the wound in his chest, and takes in the trauma, the torn tissue, the broken ribs. Bleu grits her teeth, and she suddenly itches for the Sacré Bleu's full power. Mending a broken corpse would never be a problem to her at home, and people return from death here; it simply isn't fair that she can't do anything about it now.

She bites the inside of her lip, hard.]

As much as I can be.

It's his. [It comes out just as hollowly as everything else has. Bucky hates the feel of it - obviously, why wouldn't he? - even though it's a familiar feeling, being covered in drying blood. It's just worse that it's Steve's. He'd give literally anything for it to be his instead.

He doesn't say anything else. He just wants to retreat into his own head, even if he's scared to do that too, after what happened. There's a sort of self protective disassociation he's retreated to in the past when trying to deal with it, and he wants that. Wants it badly. Just wants to stop thinking.]

[Bleu nods, glancing from Bucky to the ground to Steve again. Normally she has a knack for saying what she needs to, but now she has no words. While she doesn't want to, she can tell he wants her to leave, and after a few more moments she lays a hand on Steve's bedside before turning back to Bucky.]

Thank you.

If there's anything I can do, I will. [A beat.] Beyond fucking off, I mean.

[Bucky nods slowly, almost numbly, like he's not fully in control of the action. It takes a moment for his throat to unstick, too, and he just... Christ, he just wants everything to stop.]

Thanks.

[At some point, when he's feeling less shattered, he'll probably at least make an attempt to apologize for how he'd acted, but right now, he just. Can't. Can't do anything.]

[Bleu steps back, looks at him and Steve again, and crosses to the door. There, she pauses.]

Be careful.

[Steve had said the same thing to her a few days ago. Maybe it'll be just as ineffectual here, but still. For Steve's sake, she wants him to be all right.]

[Bucky doesn't say anything, but he nods again. There's some distant part of himself that doesn't mind or might even appreciate the warning.

Right now, he's just too messed up to do much with it.]

twenty eight ✪ voice & spam

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