imfollowinghim | twenty nine ✪ spam

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twenty nine ✪ spam

[Closed Spam]

[The room is... familiar. He doesn't know why.

There are parts of it that look like the exhibit at the Smithsonian - the rifles stashed in the closet (M1 Garand, M1903 Springfield), the clothing folded in the dresser and hanging in the closet all look as though they've been removed from behind the glass and placed here for him. Then, he'd almost wanted to be able to touch, now, he's almost afraid to.

That doesn't stop him from touching the dark blue sleeve of the jacket one of the mannequins had been wearing. The fabric's different from how he thought it would. Softer, maybe.

(It looks black when its stained with blood.)

Some of it doesn't make sense. Plaid shirts, pieces of equipment that don't come from this time period - even he has a vague sense of technology, how much the world's changed, if only because of the museum - and then there's some of the weapons he's used, things he's been issued in the past for assignments, even though he doesn't remember how or when or what happened.

Everything except the last one. His one failed mission.

There's a bear dressed like Captain America sitting on one of the cabinets. He picks it up, holds it gently in his right hand, and there's a part of him - a vicious, violent, terrified part of him, no I don't! - that wants to rip it to shreds, but the thought makes bile rise in his throat. (Or would, if he'd eaten anything today.)

The bear is carefully returned to its place, and he decides he's seen enough. There's nothing for him in this room except more questions.]

[Open Spam]

[So he sets out onto the ship. He remembers the Admiral - it doesn't bother him that he doesn't remember what he looked like, or exactly what he'd said, he's been given a mission and he's going to fulfill it - and he remembers the helicarriers, remembers failing, remembers the inexplicable surge of terror and guilt at Captain America's - Steve Rogers, the museum said his name was Steven Grant Rogers - last words and the equally inexplicable relief he'd felt when the badly injured man had started breathing again on the shore of the polluted river. But the rest of it is still... not there. Blurry.

It gets worse the more he walks around. He's still wearing the jacket, shirt and jeans, the sleeve covering his left arm, and he keeps his hands shoved in the pockets to further prevent anyone noticing. The baseball cap's still tugged down over his dirty, too long hair as well, shielding his eyes a little as he tries to get his bearings, exploring what parts of the ship he has access to, trying to attract as little attention as possible.

(People are staring at him. No one at the museum had paid him much attention, not even as he stared at his own face blown up huge in black and white, but here, people are staring at him, and it makes him want to vanish. He hunches in on himself, and tries not to meet their curious eyes.)

The Admiral had said he'd been here before. He doesn't remember. This isn't like any facility or place he remembers, not at all, but at the same time, the more he looks, the more he feels some horrible sense that he's been here before, the same, strange feeling he'd had staring at the photo of his own face starting to settle in his gut.

He feels bad. Not injured, but... Ill. Compromised.

He takes a seat in the dining hall in the corner, with his back to the wall, holding a mug of coffee in his human hand, but not drinking it, even though his stomach complains to be filled with something. The lights flickering as he walks through the halls don't bother him, but he stops to inspect some of the lingering signs of violence and death that still stain the walls, crouching, leaning in close, and frowning.

The infirmary is avoided entirely, and he spends a long time on deck, watching the stars.

Something about them seems different. He doesn't like it.]

[Spam for Morgana, after he's got his memories back]

[It's all too much. Way too much. So he - Bucky, James Buchanan Barnes - runs, because he doesn't have a choice. He can't stay there, can't talk about it, doesn't know what to fucking do, because there's no where to hide on a cruise ship of the damned where someone won't be able to find you.

He can't go back to his room. Steve will find him there, or Helena, or Ben, or someone else, and he can't face them right now. Can't face any of them, and he feels more trapped and boxed in and terrified than he's ever been, overwhelmed by the weight of memory and the years he's suddenly got crushing down on him.

Some combination of conscious thought and instinct has him standing outside a familiar door, knocking anxiously, wondering if this is just as much of a mistake as the rest of this was. But how could he have known? What the fuck is the Admiral's problem?]

[ooc: Dillon and Jean are going to pounce him and give him his memories back, but until then, enjoy your new and improved brainwashed assassin in recovery, Barge.]

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[Whether he knows it or not, Bucky picked a pretty good time to pop back up if he's feeling off-kilter: so is every other damn person that stayed up on the Barge for the week. Mickey is no exception. It's a different kind of off-kilter than what Bucky's going through, but it's been enough to keep him solidly in his cabin since the tears closed. Sleeping, mostly, in fact.

But a guy's got to eat at some point, and eventually he runs out of whatever scraps and condiments are left in the fridge in his cabin. He's sitting down with a tray -- a huge stack of pancakes and a bigger cup of coffee -- when the guy in the corner catches his eye and he looks up, then squints.]

Barnes?

[It's probably not, though, he thinks immediately. Another twin, more likely.]

My bad. You new?

[He was watching the young man with the tray of hot food - pancakes, his mind supplies, and suddenly his stomach growls even louder than it has been - and so there's a moment of tension when he realizes he's been noticed. That more than anything else, he knows he doesn't want. Even if he knows he doesn't want to go back to HYDRA - can't, anyway, doesn't know where to find his handlers if he tried - being unnoticed feels smarter, better, and it's much harder to do in a contained environment.

It's worse when he addresses him. It's that name again: Barnes.

(He remembers how his target had said it with such resignation and honest belief.)

He doesn't know what to do in the face of someone else knowing the name, or calling him by it, and something in him coils tensely, knowing he might have to lash out, but then the man drops it and whatever it was relaxes again. Slightly.]

Yes. [There's some relief at having that dropped so quickly, and he feels like he should look away, or drink the coffee, but he doesn't.

How does he know Barnes?]

[Mickey and Bucky were never bosom buddies, but he knows Bucky just well enough to think of him as a clean-cut, stand-up kind of guy -- which to a Milkovich isn't always a compliment, but that aside, this dude clearly doesn't fit that particular profile. Bucky's face in someone else's trappings. Like Stephen and Zane, like Gene and Dillon -- he's learned to roll with it by now.

Hell, maybe it's someone he can get along better with. He's gotten enough rest that he's actually not looking too wrecked from the death tolls, but he's taken approximately zero pains to clean himself up since washing all the monster gore off and crashing into bed. His clothes are very obviously slept-in, his hair slept-on. Between that and his general... Mickey-ness, he's looking about as far from clean-cut as it gets.

So he offers the guy a bit of a smile.]

'Ey. I'm Mickey. Welcome to Hell -- get out while you still can, if you can.

[This is already coming close to being the most social interaction he's had since the fight on the helicarrier. That had been a while ago now - he doesn't have much of a concept of time, not having a watch or calendar to look at every day - so he's had to talk to people, or at least communicate with them, but people don't generally greet him, or make an effort to make conversation. He knows he looks like a homeless person, and that's half intentional.

Anyway, he doesn't know what to say to that.

(Mickey very likely isn't a threat. Even if he was to someone else, he won't be to him, and the tenseness in his shoulders has nothing really to do with feeling unsafe.)]

Thanks, [He finally settles on, definitely sounding uncertain. Looking it, too, vaguely.]

[So... not a talker, the new guy. Which is fine by Mickey -- he's not much of one, either -- although between that and the tension in him, he's starting to hope they doesn't have another Ben on their hands after all. That guy wigs him out.]

You got, like, a name or anything?

[It's not especially inquisitorial, though: he's pouring syrup on his pancakes, his attention more on them than on scoping Newbie out.]

[The syrup is distracting. So at the pancakes. He realizes at some point that his attention's been pulled from the younger man and onto the food. His mouth waters.

He swallows before answering, half torn between saying "James" or "Rogers" or "no", but not especially liking any of those options. The last one, at the very least, he knows will draw more attention than he can afford.]

Wilson. [It feels like some kind of compromise, something he knows from the files, not something he got from the museum or his last target. For a moment, that seems like all he's going to say.

Except, of course, it isn't, and he hears himself ask the question like he's listening to someone else say it.]

Who's Barnes?

Guy who used to live here. Get ready for a lot of people to make that mistake. You look like him.

[He sounds more or less like him, too, which is more unusual -- the other sets of twins Mickey knows have completely different accents. Still, he doesn't think much of it yet.

He takes an enormous bite of pancake, then looks up to realize that Wilson is kind of. Staring at them. He chews slowly, swallows.]

You know we're in the fuckin' cafeteria, right? You can get food.

[He knows. He's seen the man's face in black and white photos, in video, painted on the wall of a museum display. He still doesn't really understand how, or why, but he looks just like James Buchanan Barnes, and he thinks, maybe-

The thought gets shoved roughly aside, and he finally looks back at Mickey and away from his breakfast.]

I know. [He'd known where it was before he'd stepped out of the room he'd arrived in. Somehow.

And then, surprising himself, asking it almost like he's double checking something he already knows the answer to (because pancakes are delicious and he'd eat them all the time if he could?):] Do they only have those at breakfast?

Not always.

[Because Mickey's not necessarily a 'breakfast for dinner' type of guy, but he is most definitely sometimes a 'breakfast at noon' one.]

They got 'em now, though. You don't gotta sit around pining after 'em.

[He doesn't. No one's around to give him orders anymore, and he is hungry.

Still. Making a choice of his own still seems unfamiliar and foreign. It's so much easier to just be told to eliminate a target.

It takes a moment longer, but eventually the smell and his growing hunger are too much to ignore, so he gets up and walks over to the serving area to retrieve some food of his own. He doesn't speak to anyone, and when he comes back, he places his tray down and takes his fork in his right hand, holding it awkwardly (like you'd hold a knife), like maybe he doesn't know how to actually use it, even though he feels like he should. Muscle memory, even if he can't remember ever holding a fork before.

His left hand stays underneath the table as he just stares at the plate of pancakes in front of him.]

[New Guy goes to get food, and Mickey doesn't think much more of it until he gets back. He's exhausted and starving: his main focus goes into stuffing his face, even when Wilson sits back down. It takes a moment for his peripheral vision to register the total lack of movement after that.

He stops chewing slowly, swallows, looks up.]

...'eyyo.

[His expression is somewhere between are you okay and are you a fucking robot? Because he's really starting to worry the guy might be a robot.]

You're not, like. Looking for Sarah Connor or anything, are you?

Edited 2015-04-23 00:38 (UTC)

[He looks up sharply when he's addressed again. It's not that he forgot Mickey was there - far from it - but he's been absorbed in the food in his own way. The smell is making something stir uncomfortably in him, and it's not just hunger.

The question snaps him out of it, though, and he looks genuinely confused, maybe even a fraction more human.]

No. [Should he be? HYDRA's been exposed, he hasn't been given new orders, and he doesn't really want them (even if he kind of craves them at the same time.)] Who is she?

...Never mind.

[So much for a kindred spirit; even with the fractional softening up, Mickey's really starting to get the heebie-jeebies.]

Enjoy your, uh. Breakfast.

[Because that's usually something that people... eat. Mickey looks at him for another moment, then determinedly returns his focus to his pancakes.]

[That might be for the best, because when Mickey does, it's more or less a signal that it's okay to return his own attention back to his food. The fork's still held awkwardly in his hand, but he turns it to start cutting at the stack of pancakes. He stabs a square, hesitates, and then pops it in his mouth.

He's eaten these before. And he likes them.

He blinks, wondering why pictures of a small, cramped apartment and a man with dark hair and a kind smile who's much taller than him are suddenly assaulting him. It's enough to make him set the fork aside and push the plate of food back from him, almost like he's expecting it to get up and bite him back.

Is this going to keep happening with everything he encounters here?]

[And again, Mickey's attempt to eat comes to a gradual stop. Now what?

And why the hell did he pick this seat, again? He glances around, but no one is here to spare him from this discomfort.]

Something wrong with it?

I've had this before.

[It almost sounds like a question, but he sounds too serious about it.

It's only after he's said it that he glances back at Mickey, and he looks intense and rattled, staring at him like he's not certain if he should expect an answer for this or not.]

...Okay?

[It's definitely a question on Mickey's end. He has no idea what to do with that.]

You can't eat the same fucking thing more than once?

[No, that's not it, and he goes back to staring at the pancakes, like they'll be able to tell him something.]

I don't remember when I did. [Or where he was, or who he was with, but something kind of aches in him when hazy images of the man return. Why does he seem so familiar?]

...okay.

[He blows out a breath, cheeks puffed out, and sits back with a shake of his head. Yeah, he's officially checking the fuck out of this conversation.]

Good luck with that.

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twenty nine ✪ spam

Dining Hall

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