imfollowinghim | nine ✪ spam & voice

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nine ✪ spam & voice

[Spam for Helena and Dillon, Day One]

[It's the fact that he starts feeling like he's going to fall asleep, or maybe pass out, not the sudden darkness that sets him the most on edge. It's a good thing, too, because it means he lunges for his pack once he realizes what's happening and grabs for Steve with his other hand, knowing that he doesn't want to go in to whatever this is without either one.

Later, he's not sure if he managed it or not, if the reason he wakes up and thinks he's alone is because he'd been too slow, too thrown off by whatever was happening to them before the crash. But either way, it's still dark when Bucky wakes up, and he's still got his pack with him - which has been crammed full with extra supplies without being overloaded because he's not an idiot, he knows how to be smart about this - but he's definitely missing something else.

Or, you know, someone else.]

Steve?

[He keeps his voice quiet at first, because he has no idea where he is or who might overhear it, but when a response doesn't come, he carefully moves to get his feet under him, his pack on his back, and his hand on a weapon.]

Steve?

[Spam for Helena & Dillon, Day Two]

[It's almost impossible to tell time down here, and considering he'd started off this adventure feeling a little shittier than he probably should have been when he'd known they were heading into something bad - he hasn't been a good sleeper in over a year, nothing's changed - it's not like he can even really judge it based on how worn out he feels.

But what is clear is that they've been on the move for a while, and they really need to stop for a break, even if it means the mole people might catch up with them. They're already totally aware of how bad it'll be if they get caught off guard by them, but it'll be worse if they're hungry and miserable and tired, too.

The next cavern they enter has running water and some strange looking mushrooms or something growing on the walls, and seems like as good a place as any to stop for a couple minutes. Bucky sweeps the area quickly before carefully setting down his pack and crouching next to it, already digging around for something to eat, even if he doesn't feel as hungry as he usually does this long after a decent meal. Nerves, probably.]

We should stop for a while. Dillon, you got food? [He'd passed some of the chocolate and Power Bars to Helena before they'd left, but he doesn't know how much food the other warden's got on him.]

[Spam for Helena, Day Three]

[Bucky has the last of their most recent attackers laid up in his sights, and squeezes the trigger once once he's sure he's got him. The gunshot sounds like an explosion in the cramped tunnel, and the echo almost muffles the sound of the body hitting the floor. Almost.

There's always a sort of numbness that comes along after a firefight like this, and he definitely can't shake it off, now. Bucky feels like his nerves are unraveling, and it probably has something to do with the fact that he still feels like he's got the flu and hasn't slept and still doesn't know where the hell Steve is, but whatever the real root of the problem is, he's just. Tired.

He turns back to Helena and squints, feeling that flush of irritation that his vision almost seems worse than it should be right now.

Maybe he's just tired.]

You still with me?

[Public, Voice]

[This was supposed to be filtered, but either Bucky forgot (unlikely) or the network is fritzing out badly enough to mess up locks (more likely). He's still keeping his voice down, and there's sort of a tense urgency to his voice that's somewhere between calm and not panicked, but definitely not centered.]

-eve, if you can hear me, I'm fine. I'm [zzzzzztt] - Dillon and- [zzzzzztt] -ena. Where are you?

[And a while later, there's another message, which was originally intended to reach Ben, Stiles, Scott, and pretty much anyone else Bucky's become chummy with, but again, is public.]

Everyone okay? [zzzzzzzzzzzzzztt] - we're dealing with?

[ooc: Bucky also asked the Admiral for D-ration chocolate bars, feel free to assume he passed one to your character if they're friendly at all.]

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[Helena's breathing heavily, adrenaline and terror and a weird kind of exultation burning through her. At least these are real creatures, something real to fight and kill and deal with, not just false visions and nightmares beating on her mind in the dark. Her hands are shaking now the scuffle is over. There's blood in a spray up the front of her coat from one of the things she'd killed, and more running down from a large scrape on her forehead where she'd hit the tunnel wall during the fight.]

I'm here, serzhant. [Her voice is low and husky. She nods down the tunnel at where the last body fell.] You're a good shot.

It's my job. I have to be. [His voice is low too, and maybe a little hollow, because, well. It was his job.

Bucky lowers the gun, but doesn't holster it, or tuck it away in the pack.]

We should get moving, someone'll hear it. [And although that someone might be friendly, there's a good chance they won't be. They've had a lot of experience with that as it is.

He takes a couple steps closer, and it's not until then that he gets a good look at the blood. He could already smell it, but the splatter on her coat's worrying, as is the gash on her forehead. He's got a couple nicks and bruises too, but nothing to really write home about.]

You okay?

[Her hand rises to the gash, carelessly smearing the blood there. She rubs her fingers together and looks at them, then shrugs.]

It's nothing. Shallow.

[She goes to pick her pack up from the ground then pauses, registering the blood soaking into her coat. Her other hand traces the edges of the splatter, and she glances back at him.] This is not from me.

Good. [They've already lost track of Dillon, and he sure as hell is losing track of anyone else, especially not the one person he's really supposed to be responsible for, here.

He's lost too many people. All of this rubs up uncomfortably against all those memories, and makes him all the more eager to get and keep moving.]

When we stop, you're gonna let me look at that, yeah?

[It's kind of hard to not make that sound like an order. If circumstances were different, he might even have tried to avoid it, but he's sort of running on autopilot right now.]

It will heal. [If she sounds dismissive, it's because she's not used to orders. That, and her injuries don't matter to her much. They always heal eventually. She grabs her pack and slings it back onto her shoulders, looking at him.]

Which way now? [There's a number of different tunnels branching off the one they were ambushed in.]

Not if it gets infected, it won't. [And that sounds more practiced than anything else, because guess who's needed to have this argument with someone a million times before?

But that's a good question, and one he honestly doesn't have a good answer to. Putting distance between them and whatever heard the gunshots and the sound of the fight probably is the smartest move to be making, but.

But.]

This way, [He finally decides, somewhat arbitrarily.] The ground looks like it's sloping up, maybe we'll get back closer to the surface.

[God, it's like you don't know she rarely gets infections thanks to her weird genetically engineered healing factor. ...not that she actually knows about that either. She just clicks her tongue at that instead of giving an actual reply.

Wiping at the drying blood on her forehead but keeping pace with him as they start off into the tunnel he chose, she asks:] You think the surface will be better?

It's the closest thing we've got to a landmark around here. If we wanna meet up with any of the others, it's our best shot at actually crossing paths. [Steve said he was making a map, but considering that had been days ago and they still haven't run into each other, obviously that hasn't been going well.

He's not letting himself think too much about the other options. He's been trying to check in with him, but the network's still unreliable and shitty, so that's been kind of a mixed success, a fact she's probably very well aware of by now.]

Besides, maybe it'll be a little brighter up there.

[It's a joke, but it comes out a little flat as he lets the flashlight rove over the ground and walls in front of them. So far, so good. Just more rock.]

Maybe that means more beasts also. Ones that aren't blind. [Optimism! She doesn't sound all that concerned by that possibility. She tucks her hands into pockets and continues on down the rough tunnel, crouching slightly to pass under an overhang.]

And we'll deal with them, too. [It's not... resigned, or a joke, or even really fierce, even if there's pieces of all of those in that short sentence. If they find the surface and if there are creatures up there looking to kill them, Bucky will fight. There's no question, no real regret, it's just a fact.

He hesitates for a moment before holstering his gun, only so that he can get at his comm, thumbing it on without looking away from where they're walking. He might be distracted, but he's not crashing into a wall like a moron.]

Steve, this is me checking in. You'd better not be dead. [There's a little more life in his words, there, but not enough to really sound normal. This place is wearing on him.]

[Helena's eyes flick to his gun for a second as he holsters it, before returning to the path ahead. She says nothing as he puts out the call and waits a few moments, listening along with him for a reply. Nothing comes immediately, so she talks.]

If you're alive, he's likely alive too. You were both soldiers.

[Except he'd died, and Steve had apparently basically killed himself not too long afterward. He knows Steve's probably fine, but "probably" and "definitely" aren't the same thing, and it just grates on him, to not know for sure.]

Yeah, but Steve's an idiot who thinks he's invincible, [Bucky finally says after slapping the comm on his open palm in an attempt to shock however it works into actually working.] I'll feel better when we find him.

[When, not if. He glances back at her, stony faced, but maybe a little hopeful, too.]

You still with me? [They shouldn't split up, he knows that. There's safety in numbers, but he also knows that going on a wild hunt through the caves looking for his friend isn't exactly the safest option, and this is still kind of new, for them. They're still getting to know each other.]

[The more time they spend down here, the more she sees his reactions to danger and stress the more she respects him, as a person if not as her warden. And it's not like she doesn't understand what he's feeling. If Sarah was in these caves, if Kira was... She'd be just as desperate to get to them. Family is important; family is everything. Steve is Bucky's family.]

Yes, serzhant. [Her smile is small and her voice matter-of-fact.] We will find him. On the surface or before.

[The communicator crackles and pops, blaring nothing but static. It's easy to tell he's frustrated by the terrible signal, the lack of a concrete way to contact anyone else. Her gaze rests on it for a second, hands moving restlessly in her pockets until she finds a piece of one of the D-ration bars and brings it out to bite a piece off. Look, she'll eat anything, okay.] Tell me of when you were children together.

[Since the comm obviously isn't going to be much use, he winds up tucking it into his jacket pocket again. The question's a distraction, and sort of a welcome one, because it's a familiar topic that isn't difficult to explain, or talk about in the first place. So he talks, and the words feel a little mechanical, but so do his footsteps and breathing, like this is all just something he's been programmed to do.

Which is okay. It means he'll probably get out of this alive.]

Steve used to have a lot of health problems, but he always acted like he didn't. He didn't stick out so much when we were little, but after a while he was always the shortest guy in the class by a lot and definitely the skinniest. [Which is not at all what people probably assume when looking at Steve as he is now, but it's all the God's honest truth.] People picked on him a lot, and he'd always try and give back as good as they got when they tried to fleece him for his lunch and shit.

[His voice gets more than a little wry, even if he still feels like a machine, like he's just going through the motions because he has to, because there's no other option.] I had to bail him out of fights about a million times, but I don't think he ever wanted me to.

We didn't have a lot - our parents died when we were pretty young, his mom and then my dad a while later - so I always was trying to figure out ways to make sure he was eating enough so he could actually start putting on weight. I don't know how much you know about US history, but the Depression really friggin' sucked.

[The question was part distraction and part curiosity - and she's glad when it works and he starts talking. She listens silently, footsteps matching his as they keep moving. The dark is claustrophobic, cloying, but she's been in worse places. There's some light. She isn't caged. It will pass.]

Mm, I don't know much of your country's history. I was never taught this. [There's a momentary pause but of course Bucky already knows her history, the cold hard facts of it.] But, I know what it is to be hungry. To lack food.

[There's a wry twist in her voice as she adds (because come on, have you seen Steve?):] He grew up well - big and strong, yes?

He's only been like that for a year and a half. [Some of his own wry humor slips away from his voice when he realizes his mistake.]

Or longer now, I guess.

[And he gets quiet, because he's still upset about this, that he's dead and Steve's alone, and he's not mad that he's there, or has new friends or anything, but. He feels like he should be there.

So it's easier to just keep walking.]

[The tunnels are uneven and she's watching her feet rather than him. Her questions are part curiosity and part just to keep talking, keep a bit of herself focused on something that isn't the dark or the echoes or the whole experience of wandering lost and essentially blind in these caves.]

What happened to him, to make him that way?

He signed up for a program that was trying to make a secret weapon to make Hitler shit his pants. An army of genuine super soldiers.

[He says it without quite being bitter, but he's never really been sure of what to think about the idea of just anyone who passed the physical getting the treatment. I mean, we saw what it did when it worked on someone who was kind of a bad apple from the start.]

They just got Steve. The stuff they treated him with made him grow a foot taller and put on a good hundred pounds in about three minutes. [And when Bucky'd asked, Steve said it hurt "a little", which he's always figured was bullshit.

~~(What Zola did to him hurt a lot.)~~

He stops to shine the light down a bend in the path, just to be sure they're not walking right into something terrible before continuing on. It looks like more of the same.]

I'm just glad he's not gonna croak on me next time a bad flu goes through the neighborhood.

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nine ✪ spam & voice

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