(no subject)

[disassembling]

Character: James "Bucky" Barnes &
Time period: Post-CA: TWS
Warnings: Obsessive Bucky on the loose.


At first, independence had seemed like one of his better ideas, but he had begun to revise his opinion once he had verified certain truths, taken noted of the factions searching for him, and realizing that the world was a wide landscape where a man could get lost. After he had rearmed himself from the bodies of two Hydra agents, a drug dealer, and a gang banger, he had come to realize that slipping away, hiding, being nothing at all was very easy, too easy.

He had been built on the foundation of a command structure for more than seventy years. Even before the blurred vagueness of falling, he knew order and military command. Aside from mashed up images, feelings and impressions, he knew that he had to have some manner of structure in his life. With no more commands down the line, he loitered, slipping through the shadows on Washington for awhile, finding the unsavoury places and people, leaving a few bodies in his wake and not particularly caring that they were found and televised either. A weapon bared he moved through the chaos at first because it was all he knew, listless for anything but the violence he had played a role in for so long. It lost it's purpose without the trigger of structure.

His world stagnated as he avoided those who hunted him, and he cared little for the lives he took when they found him. They came to command him because they thought he would simply bow to old standards, that he would go back to being his code name if they applied even electricity to his brain. They hadn't earned the right to command him. They were weaker than he, hadn't even survived a single encounter when he decided to throw his weight back at them. They were weak men, lost in words and hiding behind guns and dying in the shadows of buildings and trees.

Slowly, resolution began to form from the ashes of his lost command structure. He decided he would allow himself to be commanded again, that he yearned to be commanded by someone with the strength of both character and body to overtake him or at least bow him slightly with respect. Pierce had been like that, he reflected. The man hadn't needed to physically harm him to command his respect, though he remembered well being struck when he required the prompt. A few others had commanded a similar reaction deep in his guts, and his attention snapped over to them. One at a time, he decided. One searched, the other could be found if he looked.

He had been lost for a few months, considering leaving to go to Brooklyn for more pieces of an old puzzle, but he was drawn back into Washington because beating information out of a SHIELD agent had satisfied him that he would get what he wanted. As a ghost story, he knew that the only way to get proper attention was to do something not only obvious but dramatic. His depth of dramatic no doubt would be very different from others that he knew existed, but like a well-trained dog returning to his master, he knew how to get the attention that was needed to invite a recall command.

Hydra agents were not easy to find in large quantities in Washington anymore, most arrested or underground and hiding. It took him two days to find a nest of the vipers, using the old underground tunnels that he knew well. He'd ended them to prove he might not be under command, but it was something worth earning given his skills. Their bodies were left in obvious Hydra uniforms and symbols and piled high in front of the Smithsonian. As if the symbol of his loyalty degradation wasn't enough, none of the corpses had heads, and he had piled them in such a way that he could sit atop the whole mess and lounge there as obvious as the start of a new day.

Media and police were one thing, not that interesting, but he let them think they had command of him for a moment. Let them show his face around for SHIELD and Hydra and them to know he was here. Meaningless orders were ignored, people's reactions only earned a turning of his cheek in dismissal before he knew that the police presence would be a problem to slip away from. Instead he slipped from his lounging perch to ignore warnings and breaking into the Smithsonian because it suited him there. It seemed a fitting place to bow to the command of someone worthy.

Comments

[capwolf]

He looked down at the red light and then followed it back up so that by the time Bucky was speaking, Steve was looking at him. "I'm flattered that your opinion of me's that high and all, but you're wrong."

No, not he alone. He was pretty sure he hadn't done anything truly alone in his life. There'd been Bucky or Howling Commandos, or Avengers, or Sam and Nat, or even SHIELD. He didn't work alone. Other people worked with him and god dammit he wasn't a lone wolf. His pack was loose, scattered, he was sometimes introverted as hell, but he wouldn't have accomplished much alone.

[disassembling]

"Am I?" He leaned a little on his rifle, eyeing the distance from himself to the man standing on the ground. He kicked his legs up into the air like a child might, but he was anything but that as his brown eyes were coldly calculating. "You came, and I suppose that's all that matters. To the end of the line, right?"

He shifted on the plane with a surety that it would hold as he rose to his feet even as the plane swayed in the air and the cables groaned softly. "You didn't like my gift then? I can find something more to your liking if you want."

[capwolf]

Steve stepped back, but he only did it so that he could keep his eyes on Bucky. Whoever or whatever he was, he'd meant what he'd said. "To the end of the line," he repeated. He ignored any feelings that might have roused, hearing those words in that tone. "And I didn't say I didn't like your gift, I just said I wasn't the only one who understood the difficulty."

He paused, but only for a moment. Could he have gotten up there? Yeah. He could now, actually, but he didn't see much point. Not yet, anyway. "You coming down?"

[disassembling]

His chest swelled with breath when he heard that repeated back to him like a declaration, and his expression softened with faint euphoria as he swayed on his feet. Yes, he had chosen well to leave such a message. This was one who could give him what he needed, and he would see to it that Steve gave it to him. "No, you and I are different from the others. Others recognize decapitation is difficult, the little details to doing it, but you and I... we're special." And they had each other.

He shifted and stepped off the plane, falling the distance with his rifle in hand before the sound of his boots hitting the floor echoed. The tile under his feet cracked, but he simply ignored it and stepped away, flicking his rifle with an expert each to swing against his back instead. He walked towards his friend. "I saw my old face, you know. Strange they'd make a monument part for me, right?"

[capwolf]

Yeah. He'd give Bucky what he needed alright. Hopefully, that wouldn't be somebody new to beat up on. He'd done that last time, and he wasn't really all that eager for a repeat. Better being beaten up than shot, he supposed.

He stepped back when Bucky dropped, but stopped when Bucky started walking forward. "Why would that be strange?" he asked, directly. "You were a good person. You deserved better than you got. Building a monument to you's the least you should have gotten." Of course, a lot of people who died in the war should have had their own monuments, but Steve was as biased as anybody else when it came to this. More biased. Bucky was his, and his friend, and he loved the guy.

Monuments to him... those he found weird.

[disassembling]

He came to a stop just out of their punch swing zone, able to measure it with a glance and a knowledge of his own limbs. It wouldn't stop anyone from taking it to a fight, but he respected that distance for now. It would only change if someone decided to come inside to investigate what was going on; there would be nasty surprises in that case as he was fully armed.

"They said I'm dead," he replied, and he lifted a hand so he could 'investigate' his gloved fingers. They weren't interesting, but the illusion of a cat was still present. "I have never been more alive. Do you think I should tell them to change the monument for accuracy?" His blue eyes flicked up and stared at his friend, the only thing he had left. "Were a good person?"

[capwolf]

"Are a good person," Steve corrected. "Just a good person who's been used to do some bad things and is currently acting like a bit of a dick." He... was possibly not any less blunt for being a wolf. Like, at all.

[disassembling]

He thought that Steve was looking on the idea of him being a good person rather than taking in the facts. He really had only wanted clarification to make certain that perceptions were as he thought they were.

"I didn't think welcoming an old friend to a place in time we both came from was that bad," he said and dropped his hand to his side again, flexing his fingers. "You haven't learned to call names well in all this time either."

[capwolf]

"I guess that depends on what you're counting as the welcome." He tilted his head a bit. "The shooting somebody in my apartment, shooting me, stabbing me, beating me, saving my life, or dropping a bunch of bodies outside a national monument. Some of those are a little nicer than others." He was not being serious at this point, but there wasn't much glossing over the fact that their interactions to date hadn't been pleasant, and the nicest one had happened while he was unconscious. "You'd rather I called you a punk? That was your line."

[disassembling]

'James' didn't outwardly react to the list of things that he had done, but a curl of pleasure that Steve could list them so plainly and easily had his weight shifting more to his heels subtly. "I think there is only one 'nice' one on that list," he pointed out, though Steve had really hunted him just as much. "I thought the bodies in front of a national monument was a clear message to Hydra agents." Especially the lounging part, letting them know the cat was out of the bag so to speak.

He tilted his head at the name, considering it before he finally shrugged. "You may call me whatever you want." Taking a name for himself was something that came with a set identity, and he realized the opening a moment later. "What do you want to call me?"

[capwolf]

Steve had definitely been doing some hunting. "Was that who the message was for?" he asked, inclining his head just a little. "All right." There was possibly a hint of a tease buried somewhere in the drawl, but just a hint of one. "Call you? I dunno, dick was working. Probably not a good substitute for a name, though, so how about we stick with Bucky."

Because it was, so far as he was concerned, the only thing to call the guy. He supposed he could try switching to James or something, but it just felt all weirdly stilted and formal. Whatever was going on here, formal wasn't it.

[disassembling]

"No, it was a warning for them, but a message for you," he said as he crossed his arms over his chest. He thought that would be obvious that he was taking sides and promoting Steve to potential team leader of the endeavour to rid the world of Hydra again. He could help after all. "I will kill with you, if you want to hunt Hydra. It could be fun; it could be like old times." Back in places he didn't remember, but it was the thought that it might be entertaining that really piqued his interest anyway.

"Dick is a name though, isn't it? Shortened of 'William'," he said thoughtfully. To be fair, he preferred 'Bucky' because he knew that Steve favoured it. "Bucky... yes, I'll respond to Bucky then if that's what you want me to be."

[capwolf]

"I'm gonna hunt down as much of Hydra as I can find," he admitted, because he didn't have any shame about that one, and he'd wanted Hydra dead since they'd taken Bucky. Dead to the last person, as far as he was concerned. He wasn't sure how he felt about trying to do it with Bucky like this. It felt like use, and while that might be what Bucky was after....

He'd been Steve's friend, and Steve was Steve even when he was a wolf, and he just wasn't into treating people like tools.

"Dick's also a shortened form of Richard. Let's just stick with Bucky, and you can figure out what you want to be yourself." Because he wanted, yeah, but he wanted Bucky to want for himself and god, he was getting so far ahead of himself, here.

[disassembling]

Those were the words that he wanted to hear, the exact words that pleased him the most. He reached up and pushed back his curtain of dark hair with a hand, one of the more 'human' gestures he had thought of doing for himself. "I can help you; I can kill with you," he said with an intensity of a man with much to prove. "I know some of their agents, some of their old bases. We can clear out the city easily enough, leave a trail of red that Hydra won't forget."

He thought that Dick might be a bit complicated, and he certainly didn't feel like a 'dick' or a Richard or a William. He actually didn't even feel like 'James' who was apparently the name that he had been given. Bucky was alright because Steve had given it to him, and that alone provided a base of structure that he desired. "I know what I am, just... not who."

[capwolf]

It was a pretty nice gesture for being more human, though he was still left a little uncertain and confused by what Bucky was saying. Turning the guy toward a 'decent' target sounded like a reasonable tactic. He just wasn't sure how right it was. "If you don't know who you are," he said, holding off on the rest, "then you can't know what."

[disassembling]

"I know who I'm supposed to be, who people want me to be, but inside..." he trailed off and shrugged. He had a name, a face, and remembered well enough what people expected of him, but he hadn't formed a full feeling of identity to himself. He expected that would come the longer that he trailed at Steve's heels like a lost puppy. He expected Steve to know who and what he was and be able to pass on that information readily.

"I'm a weapon made from a man," he said with another shrug.

[capwolf]

"Yeah, and so am I." Literally, because both of the super soldier serum and being shot up with another serum that turned him into a damn animal. "That and other people having opinions doesn't mean I get to stop worrying about who I actually am and what I believe. Neither do you."

Which meant if he had to turn himself fucking inside out and upside down, he was going to choke back the urge to define Bucky for him. Keep him on a leash if he had to, sure, try to help him remember, yeah, but he wasn't going to draw lines around it or encourage Bucky to stay blank. He'd rather have a totally different guy back, than enable Bucky to continue to be that empty and blank.

It was just wrong.

[disassembling]

"I know. You at least understand," he said softly, aware that it was because Steve had understanding of such things that he was here, that he had left the message. He had no one else to provide him a basis for what would be needed to regain all that he had lost, but he thought that this man was the closest thing to it all. Steve was the key. "I will be who I am when I know who that is in myself."

Until then, he would be an empty weapon, full of rage and confusion and questing for something he didn't entirely understand. He would be hot vengeance against those who had lied to him, had used him. He was going to ruin more people's days in the near future.

"Will you help me take out Hydra?"

[capwolf]

He understood pretty damn well, though if Bucky understood how well and why he still wasn't sure. Was pretty sure it didn't matter right now, either. "We've got a deal, then. We'll hunt down Hydra and you'll hunt down yourself."

That he'd linked the two wasn't an accident. He wanted Bucky to figure himself out, he wanted Hydra wiped off the face of the earth. Working with Bucky was familiar and he had some of his own anger and aggression to work out. Doing it this way was at least directing it in the right direction. "We need to get out of here."

[disassembling]

He frowned and considered this deal they had just struck, not particularly interested in thinking of the fact that he was going to find things about himself the more they hunted Hydra. It was a risk, but Steve had the power to control him. He had given the man that power, so he accepted that dirty little secrets would come to the forefront the longer that they worked together. It was work the risk being close to Steve.

"Agreed," he finally said, looking towards the door that he had already broken into. "I know a way out. This way," he said simply and turned to walk deeper into the Smithsonian.