four ✪ spam & audio

[Open Spam]

[Bucky wakes up in his room feeling good. Great, even. Like himself again, and it's once he makes that realization - that he wasn't himself - that a lot of anger floods in, settles itself in his chest, and he's up and out of bed in an instant, needing to do something.

So instead of heading to the dining hall or the library, he goes right to the gym to beat the hell out of a punching bag until his hands are bloody, the firing range even if the targets aren't a challenge for him at all and the CES to go for a run until he's sweaty and out of breath. (The last one takes a while. Like, longer than it probably should, beyond just feeling physically fine after getting sucked through the door.) He's still wearing his uniform, and might have visible weapons on him on the run. In the gym, he's stripped down to a white t-shirt with the SSR logo on it, and the gun's nowhere in sight.

Eventually, he sheepishly wanders into the infirmary to clean up his hands, and then heads back to his room, fully intending on collapsing on the bottom bunk and just. Staring a hole in the mattress above him until he feels like actually sleeping.

Or, you know, a cat pretending to be a transgenic might have broken in while he was out, but regardless.]

[Public Audio]

[Later, Bucky clicks on the comm, takes a breath to say something, and then... hesitates. Because fuck if he knows what to say. He knows logically that it wasn't his fault, that it wasn't him, but he still feels like he needs to apologize, or say something about what happened.]

I'm sorry. I know that's not- I know he wasn't-

[He can't explain. Doesn't want to explain, doesn't feel like he should have to explain why he'd never want to work for the people who'd tortured and experimented on him, who've killed more good men (and probably women and kids, too, it's not like they'd had morals) than anyone's ever going to be able to count, but he still tries to grate out an answer.]

Look, [And he sounds exhausted and mad as hell all at once, but tries to force it into something else so he can explain, because he knows by now that a lot of you are going to have no idea what he's talking about.]

Where I'm from, HYDRA was the Nazi deep science division, before their boss basically decided Hitler and his pals were taking too damn long to take over the world and went rogue. I spent the last year trying to stop them and the Nazis with [Steve, fuck he misses him, but he's fiercely, selfishly glad he's not here right now anyway.] Cap and the Commandos. I'd cut my damn arm off before I'd ever work for them.

[... Probably not the best thing to say, considering how he'd showed up here. But there it is. They're the whole reason he's here - if that HYDRA goon hadn't gotten back up and fired on them, he wouldn't have gotten blown out of the train and died.]

I know how dumb this sounds. Believe me, I do, because it sounds like something out of a comic book, but it's what happened, and I'd still be back there taking them down if I hadn't gotten killed.

This is bullshit.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It was the Nazi deep science division. Schmidt - this guy, the head of HYDRA - kinda had his own agenda and broke away from the Nazis to try out their own thing. We've - the team I'm with. Was with, the Howling Commandos - were working on bringing him and the rest of the organization down.

Damn. These guys told the Nazis they wanted to do their own thing and got away with it, and you're in charge of bringing them down? That's a hell of a job. I'm impressed.

[Bucky chuckles, and immediately tries to brush it off as not a big deal. He's never felt really comfortable with people making a fuss over them, even though maybe he would have been, a lifetime ago. The Bucky Barnes who'd left Brooklyn would've liked the attention, would've used it as an excuse to flirt with girls and get an extra round at a bar.

Sometimes, it kind of feels like that person died on a table in Austria, and whatever's left of him is just some ghost trying to pass himself off as the real thing.]

I'm not in charge. I just try to make sure the guy who is doesn't get his dumb ass killed.

That's really no less important, is it? The story ends a lot differently if the guy saving the day gets shot in the back.

Alright, fair enough. [Ugh, and now he's not there to prevent that exact thing from happening, and it kind of guts him.

But that's why he's here, so. Hopefully, things will work out.

Hopefully.]

Cap's the main guy, though. I kind of can't believe all this isn't in your history books.

[Not in the history books, but somewhere on the comics shelves maybe.]

A little surreal is't it? I was just as shocked when no one had ever heard of the division of NASA I worked for. IASA, International Aeronautics and Space Administration. That's specific to my Earth I guess.

So, you good friends him? Your main guy, Cap? Or doesn't your job allow for that?

[Don't worry, Scott showed him. He's still not sure if he wants to believe the Steve getting frozen in the future thing or not. B(]

Well, I'd never heard of NASA at all before showing up here, so I'd probably've bought it either way.

We grew up together. Been best friends practically since I can remember. [And he misses the hell out of him right now.]

[Bet that talk was awkward.]

Not surprising. NASA wasn't established until 1958. And IASA wasn't until much later.

[And, because Crichton loves stating the obvious.]

Your best friend? You must miss him a lot here.

[You're welcome.]

Working together, that's good though. I was partnered with my best buddy at IASA too, but he was ground boy.

How long's it been since you've seen him?

[Which is being asked in a way that pretty much says he 120% understands how shitty it is to be away from someone like that for like, a couple days, let alone years.]

By now I guess it's been around three year. I haven't seen anyone in that long. My dad worked for NASA too. He was an astronaut before me. God, what I wouldn't give to show him all this. He'd never believe it.

[He smiles a little apologetically. He didn't mean to get so sappy all the sudden.]

What about your family? I hope they're safe?

[Bucky literally doesn't want to wrap his mind around that. He can, but he doesn't want to, because it'd sucked to be without Steve for a year, let alone three or however long he'd wind up stuck here.

He really doesn't want to think about how shitty it's going to be for Steve if he never gets out of here. God knows he's lost friends in the war, but he knows he'd be a fucking mess if he lost Steve.

So no judgment.]

It's just been me and Steve for a while, now. We're pretty much the only family we've got.

That's gotta make this even harder.

If you don't mind me asking, what brought you here?

I don't mind. [It just... kind of sucks, honestly, to be talking about it on the tail end of that admission.]

We were running a mission, and I kinda got blown out of a moving train by some HYDRA goon. Steve tried to grab me, but the bar I was hanging onto gave out and I kinda fell a couple hundred feet down a mountain. The Admiral offered me the job after I blacked out.

[After he died, he means, all of which he's admitting fairly casually, all things considered.]

[Crichton, for his part doesn't make a face at learning this, but he might just have gone a touch paler. He'd thought only the inmates came in dead or dying.]

So, if you graduate an inmate, you're hoping to get your life back with the deal?

[Bucky shrugs.]

That's the plan.

Once you get it, you think you'll stay on here for a few more, or is that gonna be it for you?

I'm heading back. You know there's a war on. [He says it like he's kidding, considering you obviously know how this ends and it's ancient history for you, but. For him, yeah, there's a war on.]

Can't say I blame you. I'd want to see it through too.

[At least Bucky signed up for his, or so Crichton assumes. He himself was not so lucky. He's in a war alright, only that started because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Story of his life.]

Me, I got my own reasons to get back.

four ✪ spam & audio

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