imfollowinghim | thirteen ✪ voice & spam

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thirteen ✪ voice & spam

[Bucky sounds somewhere between pissed off and totally burnt out and hollow when he clicks on the comm, because boy, does he have an announcement for you.]

Helena just killed Cosima Niehaus. She jumped her in an empty cabin, she knows her from back home. Sort of.

[It's a little confusing and definitely private, so Bucky doesn't feel like getting into it on a public feed like this.]

I'm bringing Cosima to the infirmary, and I'm not putting Helena in Zero, [Because he's been down there and he's not sure how he feels about it - had he stuck Ben in there? He thinks maybe he did, and it makes him feel a little sick to his stomach - especially given Helena's been locked up before and he doesn't want her thinking this is like that.] But she's on house arrest in her room until I figure out how to get her to cut this shit out.

[Private to Ben]

Can I pick your brain about something?

[Three guesses what it's about.]

[Open Spam]

[After Bucky's brought Cosima to the infirmary and made sure Helena's still in her room, he knows he needs some space. He can't go right into talking to Helena while he's somewhere between furious and emotionally flatlining, because he's mad, but he knows this isn't entirely her fault, and he doesn't know what to do with it, or how to move forward.

Funny, but he thinks he remembers something like this happening forever ago. That might have been part of the reason he'd bothered Ben.

He's pissed. At himself, mostly, so it's easy to head down to the gym, pull off his uniform jacket, wrap his hands and start focusing on beating the shit out of a punching bag instead of thinking about anything else. He'd learned how to box young - his dad had taught him some, and then he'd learned more as he'd got older, partly out of necessity (he could earn money for winning fights, and it never hurt to know how to throw a mean punch when your best friend was hell bent on taking on every bully in New York, let alone Brooklyn) and partly because he'd just been good at it.

So he attacks the bag like he knows what he's doing, because he does, and there's something almost mechanical and vicious about it, not to mention the look on his face. The bag's not in danger of getting ripped out of the ceiling, but it still swings forcefully, maybe even a little more than it probably should.

After a while, he heads back to his room to hose himself off, and hits up the dining hall. He's changed into his Commandos jacket, and slips a couple things into his jacket pockets - an apple, a roll wrapped in a paper napkin - before heading on his way. He doesn't really have time to sit and eat enough lunch for two people today.

Because he does, after all, have two other stops he needs to make:]

[Spam for Helena]

[Once he's calmed down enough to do this the right way, instead of just scowling at her and hoping that did something marginally productive, Bucky heads back to Helena's room. It's part of the reason he'd stopped by the dining hall first, besides just being hungry - maybe the food can act as some kind of peace offering for sticking her in here in the first place.

Even if the reason it'd happened was because she killed someone.

He takes a breath before knocking on the door, just to give her a head's up someone's outside.]

It's Bucky. I'm coming in. [And then he's pushing open the door, not entirely certain of what he's stepping into.]

[Spam for Cosima]

[And after that's done, it's time for the harder part of this messy little operation: apologizing to the person your inmate attacked and killed within like, a couple hours of them showing up here in the first place.

This is made worse by the fact that it doesn't seem like she's awake when he first gets there, which means he's just. Going to awkwardly loiter around trying not to look too out of place or uncomfortable just waiting around here for signs of life or movement. Maybe he should've waited a while longer - he remembers the death toll and how bad it sucks - but he kind of feels like this shouldn't wait, even if it's just a short visit. It's not like either one of them's going anywhere for a while, although she's a little more stuck than he is.

So, hi. There's a stranger sort of awkwardly hanging around your hospital bed, wearing a uniform that might not look entirely unfamiliar to you.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Well, she is. [Blunt and direct to the point, because, well. Surprise.] And you're not gonna just keep killing her.

[It's not an option - he won't just stand around letting Cosima or anyone else who shows up with her face get murdered each time they're well enough to leave the infirmary, or to have to walk around with an armed escort or something.

But besides that affirmation, he still doesn't really know where to go with this. He's out of his depth. He's seen a lot of fighting and dying, he's been hurt and tortured, he's died, and he still has no idea what it's like to be told every day of your life that you're only worthwhile as a weapon, that you need to live up to some psychotic idea that's just that: psychotic. Bucky doesn't doubt that he can help her, somehow, especially not after talking to Ben, but he knows he's not the best person suited for this job.

Of course, that doesn't change that this is his job, and he's always been bad about just walking away from a challenge. Maybe not Steve level suicidally stubborn, but close. (There's a reason they've been friends for so long, after all.)

So he runs a hand through his hair, wonders if this is right to ask here and now, after what happened, and then asks it anyway.]

Do you like doing this?

[That just kind of... doesn't compute. Like has never come into it before. Thinking about herself as a person who has likes and dislikes is really a very recent development; she's not good at it yet. Her own thoughts and desires were never a factor in the things she was told to do and what she was made to be. She doesn't know how to answer the question, so she doesn't. There's silence for a while and she curls her fingers up under her chin, eyes drifting away from him to the figures drawn on the walls.]

Did she come back?

Yeah, she did. [Later - much later, months from now with an extra blurry several decades in between - he'll understand where she's at right now, but as it is? It occurs to him, yeah, but he doesn't really understand how deep it goes for her, or why she might not really be able to phrase an answer.

He can't understand, really. He's never been through what she's been through, and having choice is something you can appreciate and undervalue at the same time.

So he rephrases, but it's basically the same question, because he thinks he needs to know. Liking it, and feeling like you had to are two different things, and they mean very different things. He knows that, at least.]

Did you like killing her?

I don't know.

[It's the default answer of a child, but really, it's hard for her to say. There was some kind of joy in doing something familiar, being something that isn't unknown and undirected like she has been since she got here. But at the same time... The feeling of Cosima's body jerking and struggling against her own, settling until they pressed together, the softening of the grip in her hair, from a stinging pull to a caress - the details complicated everything. If it had been a long distance kill, if it had been through the scope and a trigger-pull with no emotion, maybe she would say she liked it. Maybe it would even be true.

As it is, she can't say yes. As it is, she still can't answer the question.]

She... should not have come.

[At least he knows enough to know she's not just being willfully stubborn, or not answering because she thinks it's funny to watch him struggle to put the pieces together. It makes it easier to move on to the new change in subject, and his expression remains unchanged: serious, maybe a little frustrated, but he's listening.]

Why not?

[Besides the obvious, anyway.]

[She sits up, hands digging into the sheets under her, trying to figure out how she's supposed to express what were basically just wordless emotions and violent instinctual reactions. Finally, it almost bursts out of her, the only answer she can find.]

She's wrong. [Not incorrect but unnatural. It's rhetoric she's been taught since she was twelve years old, rote learned: her copies are unnatural, unholy, underserving, un-everything. That she's got a place in her heart for Sarah means nothing, because Sarah is her twin, her real twin, born from the same womb. The fact they might not be copies at all - that, as Sarah said, there are no originals - that is something she hasn't entirely grasped, hasn't internalised.]

[Bucky waits a beat to see if she'll explain more then that, and then when she doesn't, he carefully stands up and takes a seat on the bed next to her, careful to keep some space between them. She obviously doesn't seem to mind invading other people's, but he wants to give her that much respect at least, even ignoring his own issues with personal space.

He also reaches into the pocket of his jacket and pulls out a Power Bar, handing it over in silent offering. This, at least, is something they have in common: they eat a lot.]

Why? Did they ever try and explain that? Actually explain it, not just tell you it's the truth and you'd better listen, or else.

[She watches as he stands and moves, waiting to see how close he'll come as he sits, how he'll act towards her. Even with his tolerance so far, the knowledge he isn't like Tomas or the nuns or anyone who's had power over her in the past, she's still wary, still holding that fight or flight instinct close to the surface.

Instead, he gives her food. She nods a thanks, but turns the power bar over in her hands, not opening it yet.]

Creating life is God's work. But men made them. Scientists.

[And her too. Probably. Maybe. But she was told that her path to salvation was to do God's work, to eliminate them. She wants to be saved, wants to be loved by God. She doesn't want damnation after death - her second chance here has to mean something, but what that should be is hard to discern. After a moment's silence, she half-shrugs and rips the packet of the power bar open with her teeth.]

[He can't say he's surprised by how she goes after the Power Bar. Maybe it goes to show they're getting to know each other better that she doesn't get so much of a passing glance for it. That's just how she is.

Bucky isn't necessarily expecting a fight either, but he knows before he even opens his mouth that he's wading into dangerous territory, and he needs to be careful with what he says and how he says it.]

Scientists made you, too. [He says it gently, and decides the discussion about God not thinking too kindly of people who hurt and kill others who haven't done anything to them can wait, or just flat out not happen. Really, how is he supposed to justify that? He's about as lapsed a Catholic as you can get after what happened, and he's killed a lot of people. Would she even listen to him at all, knowing that and hearing that God wouldn't like it?] What about Sarah? You think she deserves to live, right?

[Her eyes flick to him when he says that, mouth full of the Power Bar. She knows it's almost certainly true. Sarah had told her that and why would she lie? She trusts Sarah; her twin is the only person she has left in the world, the one who she has a connection with, the one who saved her from Tomas' cage. If it wasn't for his next question, she might linger on the issue of the scientists. But he brings up Sarah himself, echoing her own thoughts, and she's shaking her head before he's even finished asking.]

Sarah, she's different. She's not like the rest.

Why?

[He asks even though he feels like he knows the answer already. Sure, the other clones are her sisters, technically. They share the same genes, literally, but he's got a younger sister, too, and he's no where near as close to Becca as he is to Steve. Sure, that has a lot to do with the fact that he hasn't seen her face to face in over a decade at this point, but she still feels a hell of a lot more like a stranger than family, sometimes.

And it's not like he'd ever hurt her, but Helena's gotten to know Sarah. She's tried to make a connection there, and that matters more than just hearing this person is related to you.]

We are connected. We grew together, one baby split in two in a single womb. If I am different from them, then she is too. [And Helena so badly needs to feel different from what she's always been told the others were, a creature with a soul instead of an abomination, formed against God's will maybe, but with the potential to work her way back to the light, the potential to find her place in a lonely world.] I feel it. I felt it before I knew she was my sestra.

[Of course, Sarah was the first one she'd ever spoken to, ever seen up close. Twin connection aside, that may account for more than she realises herself.]

The other ones are your sisters, too. Or brothers, I don't actually know-

[That's besides the point, and he pulls back, refocuses.]

They're people, Helena. Maybe the Admiral brought her here so you can see that. [Which is putting a lot of faith in the Admiral, but he needs to work with what he has here, which isn't a hell of a lot.] Why shouldn't they get a shot at being happy?

[Oh man, she doesn't have an answer for that, either. This time it's a little more stubborn conditioning than inability to actually understand her own emotions or articulate them. She gives him a look.]

Do you trust the Admiral?

[He doesn't really have an answer for that, and it's his fault for heading down this path. He could've said something else, but, well, here we are.

Fuck.

Bucky shrugs and slides his hands into his pockets.]

I know he helps people. Hurts us, too, but I remember what Ben used to be like. [Violent. Scared. Volatile.] No one gave him a chance back home. Being here changed that.

He pays his wardens to help people. [There's a difference, Bucky.] But he does the hurting himself.

He could've let us die. [If nothing else, you've got to give him that much.] I don't know how much else he's actually responsible for, but would you rather be dead?

[Okay, maybe you've got a point there, but she's not going to actually come out and say it. You've reached the stubborn childish side of her. So there's silence for a few moments while she finishes off the Power Bar and shifts position on the bed, curling her legs up under herself. That done, she switches back to his earlier point.]

She's not my sister.

[That's some small relief, because he's really not sure he can successfully explain the Admiral, or justify his behavior. God knows he hates him, too, hates that he can't just be back home doing his goddamn job.

(Even though if Steve still crashes into the Arctic, Bucky would have come here anyway. So.)

He doesn't get up or move at all, still with his hands in his pockets. There's another Power Bar and a D-Ration chocolate bar, too - he might actually like them. Don't tell anyone.]

Alright, so she's not your sister. But she's still a person.

[She looks away, eyes skating over the drawings again, following them up the metal struts, the girls repeating and repeating and repeating. All the same. The pause before she speaks is drawn out.]

She should not exist.

[Maybe Helena herself shouldn't either.]

[Bucky follows her gaze, and his eyes track over the drawings. They're like something a kid would do (or him, he's always sucked at drawing, always), and he wonders vaguely if she'll draw them again if he gets her a room that's less like a friggin' dungeon.

He kind of hopes not, but knows that might be stupid to think.]

Do you think that, or are you just saying it because that's what they told you?

[Yes, he is still on this track.]

[Is both an answer? It's pretty much both.]

If they told me, does this mean it's not true?

They didn't exactly have your best interests at heart. [Which he says wryly, but.]

You do know that, right?

[There's a long, long pause before she says, still looking at the stick figures and not at him:] They made me this way. It was what they needed, what God needed.

[Part of her knows. There's something wrong inside her and she knows where the blame for that lies. But there's a disconnect between her anger about that knowledge and the things that were taught to her and beaten into her for so long. She has no other way of thinking yet, just the slight glimpse of a chance for another way that Sarah gives her. She's rebuilding her own lens through which to see the world one tiny glass shard at a time, with the good people around her and the bad people gone, but until it's done she only has old habits to fall back on.]

Not what you needed. [Because there is a difference, and that's what's important.

Plus it feels safer than talking about God, or trying to really rip holes in the lies people have been telling her her whole life. He's never bitching about the nuns in the orphanage ever again, that's for damn sure.

Bucky keeps watching her, because staring plaintively or glaring or whatever else had usually made Steve budge at least a little. Sometimes. Once in a blue moon.]

Look, I know this is hard. Ben's talked with me a little about what it's like, to not really understand what it's like to have options, or a say in what's going on, and I don't get it, because it's never been like that for me. Not really. [Not like it was for them, anyway.] But I know whatever you figure out here's gonna give you a lot better options for when you go home.

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