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Follow the Yellow Brick Road; Bucky
Topic Started: Mar 6 2014, 01:31 AM (395 Views)
Spitfire
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Superspeed with Pyrotechnic Effects
Date: January 27th
Time: Mid Afternoon




Joint Post Winter Soldier and Spitfire

This was not his favorite thing in the world. It would never be. One does not spend a time equivalent to an average person's lifetime beneath mind control, drugged and brainwashed, killing enemies for a political agenda that was abhorrent to you in your normal state of thought without developing a healthy fear of telepathic intrusion. Bucky Barnes, not a man who scared easily, had developed a sickly grey sheen to his skin, and even the normally polished finish of his metal arm looked dull and dead. The quinjet landed on the deck of the helicarrier and he remembered coming here, clinging to the underside of a wing, magnets and grappling hooks released long before landing to evade discovery. Stepping out of the vehicle while wearing an eagle on his shoulder rather than a star, it seemed so wrong. He glanced down at his partner. "This is a good idea, right? I'm making the right decision."


Stepping down beside him, Spitfire zipped her jacket up and resisted the urge to bolt around the deck. The young woman hated being cooped up, even for short flights. Plus Bucky didn’t look well. As he looked down to her, she shrugged a little and slid her hands into her pockets.

“A good idea? Well, I suppose so technically. We need to know if you remember anything important…” On the other hand it could wake up some other demons and that was why she was there. Pulling a hand back out of her pocket, she held up a small purple packet between her fingers and wagged the chocolate at him. “For afters. If you behave.”


He smiled at the promised candy. "You think you can just bribe me with Freddos? What am I that can be so easy to tame?" He crossed the deck to the entry tower, and smirked, "Besides, it's been a long time since I've behaved," He glanced at her and said, "if I ever did to begin with."

They entered the tower and stepped into the lift, hitting the right button for the entry to the psi corps division. As it began the descent, Bucky leaned his head on the back of the elevator wall, and he turned his eyes heavenward.


“Actually it was more the thought that its a mutual pact. I give you these to make up for the shame you get given the run around by a girl...Although now I think about it I’m not really sure what I get out of this deal. Well, other than being out of a prison cell anyway,” she grinned at the ‘behaving’ comment, trying to keep things relatively light in an effort to provide distraction. “I’m not really very good at behaving either. I suppose that’s why we’ve been lumped together so we can wind each other up instead of everyone else.”

As they entered the lift, the change in her partner was noticeable. Exhaling quietly, Jac took half a step closer and her hand went up for a second before nervously dropping back down again. She wanted him to know it was alright and she was there, but he probably wouldn’t want to be pawed either. Instead, she gave a winning grin. “And by the way, taming you really did seem that easy, but don’t worry, I won’t tell the others on you. Our secret. As long as we can go for pizza after we ditch this place.”


He saw her moment of affection that she quickly stifled and he smiled. "I was only easy to tame because wanted it, or at least that's the story I'm sticking with." Bucky reached out when she confessed her own penchant for misbehavior and he rested his hand on shoulder, lightly. "It is a pretty sad day when the world depends on monsters and malcontents to save it, but eh, maybe it takes a criminal to know a criminal, right?"


“You carry on sticking with it,” she winked and leaned into the hand a little before pulling away to laugh at his comment. “So what does that make me, the malcontent or the monster?” Jac kept her smile up to let him know she was only teasing, even as the lift came to a stop and the doors slid open for them. Her expression did become a shade more serious however, as they stepped out. “I’m not going anywhere, I’ll be with you the whole time. They’ll have to null cuff me and send me back to the Flatiron in disgrace without any supper.”


The corridor lead the length of the helicarrier, lit in regular intervals that did little to banish the darkness. Their footsteps echoed as they walked past the rows of rooms, mostly empty save for what looked like padded medical benches. Bucky closed his eyes and there was a brief moment of memory (?)... flashback (?)...himself, on a table like these ones, stripped to the waist, the connector cuff of his arm exposed as they upgraded his tech. An iv in his throat pumped his obedience directly into his bloodstream, vr goggles on his eyes to program his will.

"Your duties, Soldier, do you know them? Are you true to them?"

Bucky footsteps stuttered and he put his hand to his head, "My duties..." He muttered, "I know my..."

Suddenly, his hand, his metal hand clenched into a fist. "Get out of my head," he ordered, "you can't trick me. My handlers spoke in Russian."


This place gave Spitfire the creeps. These days she wasn’t really a fan of telepaths anyway, but in here? Shuddering, the speedster stared over her shoulder into one of the rooms they passed, her mind working on overdrive as she conjured up all sorts of vile images and ideas.

On hearing Bucky falter and start to speak to the air, Jac had turned and had scooted in front of him in a blink, her feet moving quickly to keep steps ahead. Reaching out, this time she had no uncertainty about placing her hand on him, cupping it under his metal elbow firmly.

“Hey…Hey. Bucky. Stay with me, okay? Not them...They need a lunch break or something,” the young woman sincerely hoped they weren’t digging around in her own head as there were scores of memories that she would rather not have pulled out right now, as she had to focus on her partner.


A voice came over speakers in the hall that somehow weren't seen until this moment. "Proceed towards the reception desk. Follow the yellow line on the deck. Do not deviate from the yellow line."

Beneath their feet, a yellow line lit up, stretching to the end of the corridor. Whether or not the line actually existed was up for debate, but it was visible for now. "They're creepy bastards aren't they?" The Soldiers muttered to his partner. He flicked his eyes to her and said, "Really, I'm good. They can't break me so easy. They're amateurs compared to my last handlers."

The pair moved already by the yellow line, and the voice sounded from the speakers again. "We did not authorize Agent Falsworth to join this session. Please state your purpose, Spitfire."


Yellow line?” frowning, Jac looked down at the corridor floor and saw that she was indeed meandering over a yellow line. “Huh.” She gave a shiver and fell back in so that she was beside Bucky instead of in front of him. “Real creepy. Well. I suppose we’re here now, Tin Man. Or would you rather be the Lion? I’d call you Toto but I think you’d probably sack me as your partner,” the young Defender joked almost gleefully, trying to keep things light so that he was not pulled back by the fog of those around him once more.

The voice on the intercom prevented any further Wizard of Oz jokes from her and the young woman slowed, folding her arms across her chest. A snort of laughter escaped her lips and tossing her hair over her shoulder, Jac looked up and around for any sort of camera. “Heh. Cute. Look, he’s my partner. You didn’t ask for this session, Fury requested this session so you can stick your authorisation up your bloody speakers or come out and ask me face to face. I am coming into this session.,” Spitfire announced in an authoritative tone of voice that she had very rarely used since her Brotherhood days and Bucky might notice as being very different from her usual bouncy demeanour. “If this is a problem then you can take it up with Director Fury or we are leaving. Is that understood?”


"Proceed towards the reception desk. Follow the yellow line on the deck. Do not deviate from the yellow line." The voice said, non-committally.

The Soldiers smiled at Jac's retort to whoever was on the other end of the speaker. "You're fierce," he said, "and for the record, if I'm anyone in Oz, I'm TikTok. Wind me up and I go." He shrugged, as they marched along.

The corridor stretched in front of them and it seemed that the farther they walked the further away the end was. They were being toyed with, that much was clear, but to what end?

"Do you think they do this when Fury comes to see them?"


Jac tried to refrain from looking too smug as they were told to continue, although she was almost disappointed that she wasn’t getting a proper argument. After the past couple of weeks, she needed the release, especially after what had happened in the park.

“Fierce? I’ve been told,” she shrugged in a fake nonchalant sort of way, but the smile was now for show as Jac couldn’t stop thinking about the park. Nudging him with an elbow, she nodded to the line. “C’mon, just don’t let them wind you up…” she said, as much for her own sake as his.

Almost laughing at the thought, she shook her pale head. “Fury? I want to see the withering stare and the are you serious, this is my goddamn Helicarrier spiel that’d make them pee their boots if they even tried this show,” it was getting more frustrating the more steps they took. “I mean, c’mon. Is this really necessary, or is this just because they can’t download Flappy Bird anymore.”


Suddenly, as if responding to their complaints, the yellow line vanished, and they were standing in front on a desk. A young man dressed in a SHIELD uniform without and rank or insignia sat there, hands folded on the desk. Welcome to Psi-Corp," he said. "Your bay is being prepped. Please remove all weaponry, and move to the open door."

Bucky spread his hands, "I left my weapons back at the Flatiron."

The agent extended a hand and tapped a pen on his metal arm. "All weaponry."

Bucky narrowed his eyes and then, without a word snapped his arm off at the connector cuff. He handed his arm to Jac. "Hold that for me."

Down the hall, a room lit up, and the Agent smiled, "Your bay is ready."
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Winter Soldier
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He's Fast. Strong. Has a Metal Arm.
Jac stared down at the arm in her...well, arms and wondered what the exact etiquette was for holding a person’s arm. “Wait, wait, I can’t just carry your arm around! That’s kind of weird...What are you looking at?” pulling a face at the Agent, she followed after Bucky before the man could stop her, readjusting her hold several times to find something in between weird and generally respectful of the fact it was a limb.

“You do realise I’m more dangerous with this thing than you are right?” the speedster muttered as she fell into step beside her partner. “Well, relatively speaking anyway. At a few hundred miles an hour.”

Pausing at the entry to the bay, Spitfire rose up on her tiptoes and looked inside. “Do...I’ll come in. If you want me to.”


Bucky didn't smile, as he walked towards the bay, not liking the reminder that he was something less than he once was. Jac made her comment and he nodded, "You're more dangerous if you use it as a blunt force object, but that arm has a hell of a lot more to it than you know." He resisted the urge to bring his remaining hand up to the connector cuff. "It was already the highest grade the soviets had and now that I have Fury's bankroll behind it? Just don't fiddle with it," he said, grimly. "It's a lot of trouble, but I can barely remember how I functioned without it."

They got to the bay, and he looked inside, at the single padded chair/bench. Beside him, Jac rose up on her toes to peek around him, asking if she should come in. He nodded, "I'd like it if you did."

Entering the bay, he sat down on the chair and said, aloud, "Do I have to put something on my head or something?"

::Just relax, Agent Barnes,:: came a voice in their head. ::Tell me about your mother...::

"My mother?" Bucky frowned.

::That was a joke,::

"It wasn't funny," he grumbled.


Snorting a little, she shook her head. “It’s your bloody arm, not your phone. Of course I’m not going to fiddle with it. That would be weird…” Not that this whole thing wasn’t really weird enough already, but Jacqueline figured that she didn’t really need to go and point that one out for them.

There was no other chair in the room and as Bucky took a seat, the Defender looked around and hesitated for a moment as she considered sitting on the floor beside him. But she wasn’t there as a lap dog, so instead she stood just a little behind and to the side of him, on the side where he still had an arm. Just in easy reach.

The voice was trying to be funny. Was that suppose to put him at his ease? Rolling her blue eyes, Spitfire shook her head, simply glad that they had never dragged her down here while she had been a prisoner. A funny knot formed in her stomach. She hated waiting.


Without ceremony, or fanfare, suddenly, their environment changed. They were standing, both of them, inside a room, lit with auburn lights, heavy archaic equipment surrounding them. Men in military dress clustered around a table. "No..." Bucky muttered, "This can't be... There's no way I could see any of this..."

On the table, as the rapidly speaking Russian muckity mucks and doctors partd, it was plain to see that it was his frozen body, left arm torn away at the shoulder, eyes open, but frosted over. "Bring him back," said one man, who's rank and higher standing was clear. He was speaking Russian but they were able to clearly understand him. "Bring him back and let us see what can be done with the partner of the American ideal..."

Bucky, standing beside Jac, grit his teeth and muttered, "Karpov..." He didn't look at her as he said, "My first master."


Her mouth fell open a little, but she realised and was mindful enough to snap it shut again. She shouldn’t be there. Or maybe this was happening just as they wanted it to and it was for their warped amusement. It was hard not to look at the body on the table, but her quick blue eyes were also taking in the rest of the room in case there were any clues to be seen. Maybe she was being dimwitted, but there wasn’t much to go on. There was the machinery but most of that could have been shipped around to destinations needed.

As Bucky spoke, she glanced to him almost guiltily. “First…?” Jac hadn’t meant to ask that question, but she didn’t like the way he said first. That suggested something worse.


"There were others," Bucky said. "Karpov was an old man, after all, and I've lived a long life..."

The scenery shifted, and they were now in an operating theater, watching as a device was placed over the empty minded soldier's head. On scratchy monitors attached to the device images flashed by so quickly they were hard to see, russian words pumped into his ears, faster and faster. Jac might have been able to decipher what was happening. Bucky merely watched the body in the chair, as the connector cuff for his arm was bolted to his tortured frame. "I was only twenty-one, did you know that?" he said, quietly. "I felt so much older, but I had barely lived more than two decades... We were men at eighteen back then, especially those of us who had gone to war. Nowadays... I wouldn't trust a twenty-one year old to change the brakes on my car."

He lifted his head, and addressed their unseen psi-corps agent, "Why are you showing us this? This isn't why we're here. We need to know about Greenville."

::Greenville is hidden,:: the telepath said, ::I can take you through the routes that lead there, this way, or I can blast a hole through the center of your psyche and gouge the information out like a tumor. Which would you prefer?::

"I'd prefer to go home," Bucky said, "but I guess that is not an option."

::No, Soldier,:: said the unseen voice, ::it is not.::


Around them, things shifted like smoke to create a new scene with its own horrors. The screens were full of words, but given that she could not understand Russian beyond simply recognising the language, it was hard to tell exactly what he was being fed with. No doubt the basics, but then a more efficient vocabulary was probably being layered on top. Jac had known he was young...her grandfather had been young too...but war changed things. She was silly natured, or at least that was what she presented to people. Really, the truth was that Spitfire put a brave and funny face on to cover up cracks and pain. Her way of telling everyone that she was ‘alright, really I am’. It was easier, and better, than crying in some forgotten corner.

As Bucky said about twenty-one year olds, a slight smirk crossed her face and she looked up at him. “What about twenty-two year olds?” It was a snippet of mirth in otherwise dire waters and clearly, he was not enjoying this drawn out process, addressing the psychic who responded as only a psychic would. The hard way, or the harder way.

“You can do this,” the Englishwoman reassured him quietly. “You’ve survived all this already...You’re still here, aren’t you?”


"Am I?" he asked.

Another shift, the Soldier training, learning to use his new arm. He was moving slowly, but almost like a montage in a movie, the scenes were starting to move faster now, and soon, the slender framed boy was most definitely a man, and moved with a skill that was far superior to anyone who sparred with him. Karpov appeared in all these memory fragments, watching, waiting, coldly calculating. The familiar black and brown uniform soon appeared, and on the metal arm, they carved a star, painting it red, marking him as their own. Bucky remembered this moment, and felt sick with the pride it had given him.

Now, he stood in front of Karpov, himself, not the image, and together they raised a glass of vodka, toasting the success of his training. <"You are my finest creation, my twisted joke on the Americans. Let us drink to their demise."> Karpov said, cruelly delighted.

"Da, Komrade Karpov," Bucky answered, lifting the illusionary glass, and tipping it back. There was nothing there, but he felt the burn of the vodka... and he felt the satisfaction that Karpov was pleased.

He'd forgotten that Jac stood beside him.


This Illusionary plane scared her more that she wanted to admit to. What she was seeing was so real to her senses that Spitfire had to keep mentally nudging herself to recall that she had not gone time travelling again. After Exodus, she was a little nervy around telepaths and really, her main reason for even coming anywhere near this place was because her partner had needed her. Otherwise they would have needed to literally drag her in kicking and screaming.

Deep down, as often as she reminded herself that this place was not real, she prayed that they would not go picking through her memories like this to present like one big storybook. Then Bucky wasn’t beside her any more. It was like an electric shock ran through her and she was startled to see him standing with the Karpov bastard, drinking vodka. He hadn’t physically moved at all, but it now felt as if he stood a mile away from her when in reality she could still reach over and touch him with one hand.

“Hey…hey!” she bustled over and gave Bucky a sharp poke in the ribs. “You are so here, so don’t forget that,” she insisted, loudly. Oh, she so wasn’t cut out for this...


Feeling the sharp poke, he looked down at the girl and for a moment, his eyes were unfocused, he opened his mouth and began, "Kto--"

::Do not interfere, Agent Falsworth,:: came the voice of the Psi-Corp telepath. ::The Soldier must be the Soldier if we're to see what he has to show us. Can you trust your partner to come back to us when we have what we want?::


Muttering for the disembodied voice to bugger off, Spitfire took a few reluctant steps back. She liked this even less now, but she did trust Bucky...Mostly she was worried that he didn’t have enough faith in himself, although she knew he was mistaken to doubt himself. Which, well that was probably a little hypocritical seeing as she doubted herself plenty.

“Fine...Fine. But if you hurt him in any way, I’m going to revert to old habits on your arses and pin your stuck up nose to the ceiling. Got it?”


::I would love to pick your brain, Agent, perhaps we'll schedule an appointment for you when this mission is complete?::

The world rippled again, and they were treated to a series of missions the Soldier was sent on. Blindly acting out these atrocities... or was he simply reliving them, Bucky moved like a man possessed as he brought the deaths of senators, ambassadors, enemies of the state that was now his... He didn't respond to Jac's conversation with the telepath, and he didn't seem to see what was happening to him. The images came quicker now as the telepath grew more proficient in swimming around in his brain, and there was suddenly a new element added. Periods of darkness and silence, the chaos of the world shifted to quiet, lonely store rooms. He took a motionless stance, his posture neutral, floating, almost at rest, head down, hair falling in his face.

::Stasis periods:: the telepath mused. ::Hibernation...Noted.::

Then, suddenly, everything changed in a minute, and Bucky was on the padded chair again. He looked tired, confused, and allowed the memory images of someone new to stoop over him, affixing the retraining devices over his eyes. <"Who are you?"> he asked.

"Aleksander Lukin," said the young man, in English, "General Karpov is dead. You belong to me now."

"English..." the Soldier frowned, "Why are you speaking in English?"

"Because what I need you to do," Lukin said, coldly, "you cannot be Russian."


“Ugh. I bet you would. I sometimes wonder if you people enjoy this…” she muttered in response to the telepath, less than thrilled at the prospect of an appointment, as inevitable as it was. But that was all she said on the matter, keeping her concentration fixed on Bucky instead. Missions started to sweep by. As a member of the Brotherhood, Spitfire had had her own missions, but it happened that she could remember them all. The locations, the faces...But this? It was like swimming through a serial nightmare of murder and destruction that made many Brotherhood members look like amateurs and an icy feeling snaked down her spine. She had never disbelieved Bucky when he had said he had done terrible things, but seeing them in ‘person’ was another matter entirely.

Then the killing sprees punctuated with the weightless feelings deep in the dark stopped. Another man appeared and this one gave a name. Lukin. “We must be nearly there now…” she muttered to the telepath, a fixed glower on her pale face.


The Soldier stood in front of a collection of photographs, sorting through them. Men and Women, all young, all chosen to have standard generic features, none of the characteristics that would classify them as Russian. "These ones," he told Lukin, "These are the ones who best will blend in. But training them, in this Greenville habitat... that will not make them what you want them to be. They are still just men and women. Even if you breed them selectively, placing the strong with the strong, the smart with the smart, the fast with the fast, evolution takes such a long time."

Lukin set down the glass he had been drinking out of, and tapped the cane he affected on the floor. Suddenly, he launched it up into the air to grab it in a pulled back stance, and he swung it, hard, shattering it across the Soldier's skull. "You do not question!" he snapped, "You do not have doubts. You do as you are told or you go back into stasis forever. This was your only chance, Dmitry, for you to serve the Motherland. Were we wrong in selecting you for this?"

Not daring to wipe the blood from his face, the Soldier grit his teeth and said, "I do what I am ordered, Comrade Lukin. I do as you tell me."

"Good puppy," Lukin said, "Now, don't you worry your cotton filled head about the speed of evolution. I have already thought of that. We will enlist the aid of an ex-patriate, a scientist, persecuted for what the soft bellied Anericans called 'unethical medical practices.'"

"An American scientist?" the Soldier frowned, though he didn't dare give voice to his doubts.

"His name is Calvin Zabo," said Lukin, "And you're going to be working very closely with him."


Watching him select the Greenville residents, Jac’s brows furrowed together as she willed some sort of clue to be revealed. A name, map coordinates, anything...A sharp gasp escaped her as the cane smashed against the side of Bucky’s head and she had to remind herself over and over that this was not real. Once, this had happened, but that was in the past at a time when things could not be changed. Raising a balled fist to her lips, she chewed on a knuckle to stop herself from punching something, her heartbeat racing even faster than usual.

“Haven’t you found enough yet?”


::Searching the Zeitgeist for Calvin Zabo:: the telepath said, :: This will take a moment. Please stand by. Memory scan suspended. You can talk to the Soldier if you wish. We'll pick this up again momentarily.::

The room darkened and then lit up again, becoming just a room, with Bucky laying on the padded chair, staring up wordlessly, expressionlessly at the ceiling. He turned his face away from her, the illusionary blood no longer visible as it had never really been there, and he spoke, swearing softly in Russian. He spit, putting his hand to his face expecting to see red.

He didn't speak to Jac.


Several colourful words formed in her head in protest to this whole situation, but even deep down, Jac knew that this was a necessary evil, as vile as it was. As the scan was paused, all the air rushed out of her. She hadn’t even realised that she had been holding her breath for so long. Making a face again as the voice told her that she could talk to Bucky, Jac noted how he looked away from her.

“Thank you. So much. I mean, really,” she intoned bitterly at the telepath and moved around. It was hard to know what to say and she wasn’t always good with words, so instead she very quickly closed the tiny gap between them and wrapped her skinny arms around his middle in a tight, tight hug. No doubt the last thing he’d want from her was a hug and the last thing she wanted was for him to mistake it as pity. But it was a symbolic gesture, one that reminded him of her presence. She was there. She couldn’t do very much to be helpful. But she was there.


Bucky's spine stiffened at her embrace, but then he relaxed, reaching up to touch her pale blonde head. "I'm ok, Jac," he whispered. "I'm not great, but I'm ok. Thank you, Partner... I needed you here."
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Spitfire
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JP finished

They picked up the session soon, and the long span of the Soldier's life when he used his very American-ness against his country by training soviet operatives to blend unfolded before their eyes, the telepaths of Psi-corp worming mercilessly through the labryinthian shambles of a mind more constructed than remembered. What he had been, cold and efficient, grew so much more so, so much more manipulative, cruelly punishing those who did not follow his orders, more than once standing as final face that the Greensville washouts ever saw, as he was made to execute them before their fellow participants. No one dared to flinch before what the Soldier was, and Spitfire was made to watch as he re-enacted every last bit of inhumanity, lost in his own torture. This was her punishment for daring to stand beside him during this, and the telepaths... they had long enough been drilled in their own sort barbarism. For the Good of the Country. For the Good of the World.

If they understood the irony, they did not let on.

No matter what else they forced out of Bucky Barnes's scarred and misused unconsciousness, though, what they could not, would not be able to get out of him was details on Zabo. Only that he was a monster, that somehow, he was something worse than the soldier, something so terrible that it soon became clear that not all of those executed dropouts were failures. An alarming number of them were just those who realized what came after the Soldier... and they couldn't face it.

At last, the images faded, and Bucky slumped in his chair, his long hair soaked in sweat, blood on his lower lip, real this time, from where he had nearly bitten through it, trying to stifle himself from speaking those words he had already spoken years ago.

"Thank you, Soldier," came the unpleasantly empty voice of the telepath, "You have been an excellent subject."


The speedster’s heart felt heavy in her chest as she watched. It was painful. But she had seen much violence in her young life and it was not that which upset her. Jac wasn’t blindly forgiving of Bucky, but she could not find it in her soul to condemn her friend either...He had done some awful things, yes, but the torture and the brainwashing that had been put in place on him to make him into this weapon? It wasn’t so simple as ‘it wasn’t his fault’ but she was not about to ditch on her partner either, afraid and appalled by him.

Finally, the images stopped and Spitfire felt very, very tired. Realising that she was still in possession of his arm, the young woman crossed over in a yellow blur and knelt down beside his seat. “Here,” she offered it up to him, subtly helping him to reconnect it, even though ‘permission’ had not been given. Screw permission. There was nothing else she could do and that frustrated her more than anything. Looking up at his face, she saw the sweat and the blood and held in her anger, holding out her hand instead. “C’mon, lets just get out of here,” she hoped her voice wasn’t shaking with the turmoil of emotions that she had inside.


As his arm reconnected, and he felt the subtle impulses return inside the cybernetic implants embedded in his skull, he flexed his metal hand, experimentally, mostly to give him something to do other than look at Jac. He was not stupid. She'd just seen him at his ugliest. When they went back in time, he had been half insane, and that was something far different. You can pity a crazy man, suffering his own losses and pains, but the Winter Soldier at Greenville had not been insane. He had believed he was a soviet patriot, he had believed this was necessary for the prospering of the Motherland... he had hated the diplomatic democratic beaurocratics with the blood thirsty zeal of a terrorist indoctrinated into espionage because it was what he believed. There is little worse than men who are willing to do evil for that they think is a good reason. You cannot rationalize with them, for every action is justified, every death given meaning. To convince them otherwise is to turn their lives into a wasted effort…

And, his life had been so long.

So very very long.

He noticed her hand offered to him and though he didn't need her help to rise, he reached out and took it, understanding why it was offered. Then, Bucky released it and stood up. "Still my partner?" he asked.


“Still your partner,” her face was pale as she said it and she stood without her usual spark, but she fixed him with a very fierce, determined look and nodded all the same.

“Don’t forget, I used to be Magneto’s favourite soldier. I used to make him tea. I’m not pretending I know exactly how you feel or how much you’ve been through, but there’s a reason Fury put us together, so don’t forget that…”

Something tugged at her mind, making her glance over her shoulder to an empty corner of the room as a reminder of something the telepath had said to her earlier fell back into place and the speedster scowled. “C’mon, this place seriously gives me the creeps. They can debrief you later. After all, they have the information now.”


He managed a smile, wiping the blood off his lip, and said, "Clearly, Fury's a masochist." Looking up at the ceiling, still unable to see the speakers, Bucky said, "I'm done here." It wasn't a question.

"For now," came the voice of the telepath. "We'll call you back in if we need more information, Soldier."

"Like hell you will," came his tense answer. "What did the research on Zabo say?"

There was a pause and then the telepath said, "The Defenders will receive a dossier when the Director compiles it... but between us, the Zeitgeist... has very interesting thoughts on Mr. Zabo... "

"Wonderful," the Soldier said, "I do so love an interesting villain."

"Much like yourself?" asked the telepath.

Bucky put his metal hand to his head and said, "Hey, tell me what I'm thinking now."

There was a long pause, and then, "Language like that betrays a lack of intelligence"

Bucky smirked, "Let's go, Partner, I could use some tea myself."
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