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| Your Own Beloved Sons | |
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| Topic Started: Sep 13 2014, 10:18 PM (298 Views) | |
| Nick Fury | Sep 13 2014, 10:18 PM Post #1 |
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The Spy
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April 10th Early early Nick Fury did not live on the helicarrier tethered between Ellis and Liberty, no, he chose to commute, as it were, if one could call being picked up from his apartment rooftop via quinjet every morning at 5am. He could fly himself, he had been one of the Tuskegee airmen, after all, in the days before the Infinity Formula, in the days before SHield, but the idea of parking a highly sensitive piece of machinery like a quinjet atop the brownstone seemed a bit foolhardy to him. He was anything but foolhardy. Which is why, though he looked completely casual when he entered his office, Nick was not at all so. But the tiny subtle warning signs that had alerted him to the presence of an intruder were immediately proven to be giant glaring announcements when he saw the man sitting on his couch. "Barnes, you're a creepy bastard." Fury said, calmly, setting the his finger-sized single-use tazer, nicknamed The Bolt, on his desk. "So, I've been told," Bucky said, dragging his red rimmed eyes over to the weapon on the desk. "That for me?" "Could've be if I wasn't such a Johnny-on-the-ball," Fury said, "You left your calling card on my door lock." "And here I thought I was being stealthy," Barnes said, not offering an apology for the unorthodox way of setting up this appointment. Fury took a seat behind his desk and said, "No, you didn't. If you were being sly, I wouldn't have had a chance to pull the Bolt. You wanted me to know you were in here." Bucky sat in silence for a few minutes, tapping a metal finger on his knee, before muttering, "You've always been too smart for your own good, Nick." "Yeah, so my mother always told me," Nick smirked, taking in the appearance of his agent, his old enemy, his old friend, "And, Buck, you've always been damn easy to read." With a vague, self mocking wave of his hand around his face, Bucky grimaced, "It's my eyes. Windows to the goddamned soul. Used to be a time, believe it or not, when these baby blues used to be my key to getting the girls. You would be amazed how many silly little blondes would drape themselves on my arm to try and catch a glimpse of themselves in them." His words were light, his tone decidedly not so. "It's been a long time since I've felt like I could look someone in the eye, Nick, much less bat my lashes and make the ladies swoon." "That what you want to talk to me about?" Fury asked, "Your love life? I'm a confirmed bachelor, Bucky. Thanks to Hyde, you've gotten more action in a week than I've had in a month of Sundays." Barnes's eyes narrowed into dark slits and he spoke through grit teeth, "That supposed to be a joke?" "It's supposed to be a prompt to get you to talk about what I read in those reports you and Miss Falsworth filed," the director said, uncowed by the anger of the Winter Soldier, which would be foolish for anyone who was not Nick Fury, "I'm assuming that's why you are sitting in my office at 5:47 in the a.m. instead of sleeping in your comfortable bed in the Flatiron Building, because of what happened in Greenville." "That bed... it's too soft. I'm still not used to sleeping without being stuck in a freezer for a few years." Bucky muttered, looking away. "How much of that ingrained behavior, " Nick said," and how much is refusal to sleep like a normal person out of some sense of self flagellation?" Without looking at the director, the super solder assassin picked at imaginary fluff on the couch arm and said, "And there you go being too smart, once again." |
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| Winter Soldier | Sep 15 2014, 07:15 PM Post #2 |
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He's Fast. Strong. Has a Metal Arm.
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Fury stood up, and crossed to the small counter near the window, where he kept a coffee maker, along with a few other things. "Need a pick me up, Barnes?" he asked, not addressing Bucky's last statement for the moment. "Coffee?" Bucky looked over, and was surprised instead to see Nick pulling a bottle from a small panel. "Vodka. Even better." Nick smirked, "It's after five somewhere right?" "Hong Kong, I think," Bucky said, accepting the glass he was offered. "Ever been?" Nick asked, taking a seat in the corner chair next to the couch instead of behind the desk. "Hong Kong?" the other man frowned, "I don't remember. Possibly. There's a lot I still don't remember. Pieces come back to me at night, or when things are quiet. I don't much like quiet. It helps to have a pair of speedsters in the hq. One or the other are usually up, and Tom doesn't really ask a lot of questions." "Jac does?" Bucky looked at Nick, seriously, trying to read the man. He wasn't good at reading people, not in that way. Put him in a battlefield situation where he stood against Fury, and he would know every battle tactic like it was telegraphed and choreographed. But face to face, this wasn't his strong suit. "You keep going back to her," he said. "We're ok. I think. I hope. I... shit... what do you want to hear?" "I don't want to hear anything," Fury said, "except what you want to talk about, and since you are the one who broke into my office, I assume you want to talk. But, hell, Barnes, you just want to drink I'm fine with that too." Shaking his head, Bucky shot back his vodka and muttered, "I'm an American, vodka shouldn't be my drink of choice." "Lots of Americans drink vodka," Fury said, "You don't think I had this bottle in here on the hopes that a former soviet assassin would come in here for a heart to heart, do you? I didn't need to believe I was Russian for seventy years to pick a fine potato liquor as my choice of inebriate. It gets the job done and done well. Much like you, actually." Looking at the director sharply, Bucky's eyes took on that dangerous quality again and he snapped, "Well? You call Greenville a job done well?" "Hyde's in custody," Nick said, calmly, "Greenville's citizens are being debriefed and deprogrammed, relocated to a secure location. Hell, you even rescued Falsworth's long lost brother. Seems successful to me." "And, Natalia?" Bucky asked, "You knew she was there? You knew she was alive?" "I did." "And, you didn't tell me?" Fury refilled his glass and said, "Do I look like I am obligated to inform agents that their exes are still alive? Last I checked, I was Director of Shield, not of a lonely hearts club." Bucky sank back into his seat and grumbled, "You're a son of a bitch, you know that?" "Eh, Mom wasn't perfect, but she did her best," Fury quipped. There was a pause as the two men drank their drinks, and then, Nick said, "What happened in Greenville wasn't your fault, Buck. I read your report and Spitfire's, and after weeding out the parts where you blamed yourself and she blamed herself, I think I got an accurate picture of the situation, and frankly, I think you both did exactly what needed to be done. You worked as a team, as a partnership, and that's why I put you two together in the first place. You both need the other to remind you that you're more than what's been done to and by you. That's not something I can do for you, and I don't think you'd listen to me if I tried." "And what Hyde did to us?" Barnes said, his voice tight and cold, "What he made us feel for each other? How does that work? How do we recover from that?" "Why do you have to?" Fury asked. "Because she's the goddamned granddaughter of one of my oldest friends!" Barnes shouted, "Because I'm old and broken and incapable of being whatever he was trying to make me be to her! Because her whole life has been one fucking complication after another, and Jesus, Fury, how much more would I give her? I don't love her... not the way she needs to be loved. I can't. I don't deserve her, and she shouldn't be punished by being saddled to a basketcase like me. How the hell are we supposed to stay partners, when I don't even think she wants to stay friends?" |
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| Nick Fury | Sep 18 2014, 09:01 AM Post #3 |
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The Spy
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The Winter Soldier had an estimated kill record of seven hundred souls in singular or multiple events over the span of his long life time, from solo assassinations of world leaders to wholesale slaughter of entire governments of countries that no longer existed because of what he had done to them. He had enough skill to cripple, maim or kill Fury and disappear from the helicarrier before anyone even knew he was on it in the first place. An angry shove from the arm he was born with much less the one he was given would be enough to send the Director crashing through the window behind him as if it was made of rice paper. Anyone who had an ounce of sanity might be very fearful when the super soldier created by dark sciences rose his voice in anger. But Nick Fury remembered more than the living weapon in front of him. Once upon a time, Bucky Barnes had been a cheerful and far less frightening figure, who had ignored the modern prejudice of his age, and the backwards ignorance of the time he grew up in to offer words of encouragement to a young airman who was willing to die for a freedom he would have to wait generations for. He didn't even flinch at Barnes's outburst, waiting until Bucky had collapsed again in his chair and saying, "You through?" "I am," Bucky muttered, "with all of this, I'm out, Nick. I'm out. Consider this my resignation." "From the Defenders?" Bucky shook his head, his hair still in the short 'respectable' and slightly old fashioned Greenville style, "From Shield. From being a soldier, all of it. I didn't ask for any of this." Fury gazed at him monocularly, and asked, "So that wasn't you lying about your age to go fight the Nazis?" "There are no more Nazis," Bucky groused. "Not true, but even if there wasn't, there's still HYDRA, and AIM, the Brotherhood, the Hand, the Church of Humanity," Nick said, "Gene Nation, Serpent Society, Sinister Six, Fearsome Four, et cetera, et cetera. That isn't even counting all the up and coming threats when some whack-a-doodle gets bitten by a radioactive wombat and decides to blow up the George Washington Bridge. You willing to retire to a rocking chair and watch the world burn, knowing that you have the ability to stop that from happening?" Sullenly downing the last of his drink, Bucky rose, crossing the office to look out the window, "I was supposed to serve my tour, help stop the Nazi threat and then go home to marry Lily Pendergast, or Sally Fenwick, some pretty girl. I was supposed to get a job doing construction, father a couple kids, and then die an old man twenty years ago surrounded by my family. When is my turn for that, Director? When do I get to have a life that belongs to me?" "You don't," Fury said, joining him to look out over the city beyond. "I'm sorry, Buck, but you don't. Neither do I, neither does Steve, neither does Natasha... Buck, Buck, this world is a bad place, and you and I... all of us in varied ways for varied reasons, helped make it that way. We are going to have to fix it because we can, because we have the strength in our bodies, in our hearts. I know that only thing you ever wanted to do was to save Steve, and maybe you saw enlisting in the army as a way to do that, I don't know. The point is, the world needed you more than he did, and that's still the case. For all of us, and we are capable of answering that need." "And our needs mean nothing?" Bucky asked, studying his mechanical fingers, watching them flex into a fist and then back again. "Just continued slavery to forces greater than us?" Fury risked placing a hand on the other man's shoulder as they stood together at the window, "Slavery suggests that this is not our choice. It is, even when if doesn't feel that way. I chose to take the Infinity Formula so I could shape SHIELD. Steve chose to volunteer for an experiment that could possibly have killed him. You, old friend, sorry to tell you, chose to come back to the helicarrier when your conditioning broke. You weren't able to just disappear, no matter how much you think you want to. Jac, she's the same way, a criminal past, the ability to use her skill and vanish if she wants, yet she's standing for what's right, because that's who she is." "It's going to get her killed," Bucky said, not looking up from his hands, "I going to get her killed." "Or save her from it," Nick said, "or maybe she'll save you. The point is Barnes, that no matter how many times you fall down, it's important to get back up. You lie there in the sand, you're just going to dirty." Dropping his hand, Fury turned away. "Your partner is going to the Psicorps to make sure that every last bit of info stuck in there by Hyde, by Exodus, by Magneto is weeded out, and she's able to be who she truly wants to be. You going to be with her when that happens?" Bucky didn't stop his deathglare on the distant city, and muttered, "I don't think she wants that." Nick leaned back, steepling his fingers under his chin, and then he asked, "You bothered to ask?" |
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| Winter Soldier | Sep 23 2014, 09:29 AM Post #4 |
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He's Fast. Strong. Has a Metal Arm.
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"I'm not talking about my going with her," Bucky groused, "I'm talking about her going to your spooky nest of brain pokers. You ever actually been down there to visit them? I'm going to guess not, or you'd know what kind of things they do there." Fury nodded his heavy head, "I know. I've had my time in the chair with their mental fingers inside my skull. It's unpleasant, and it's difficult to sit through. But it's important, and it's necessary." Folding his arms over his chest in a disgruntled knot, the soldier mumbled, "You don't make things any easier, you know that?" Again there was a nod in response, "I've been told, Barnes. Should I tell Psi-Corps to expect two?" "You've already told them, haven't you?" Bucky looked away, pretending there was something terribly interesting on the far wall. "I'm sure I don't have to," Fury said, dryly, eliciting a snort of amusement from the other man. "I'm sure Jac will appreciate you returning the favor she did by accompanying you." "That's not why I'm agreeing to go," Bucky said, looking back at Nick, the pain and shame clearly visible in his eyes though the rest of his face was absolutely expressionless, in that way of his. He'd spent seventy years in a muzzle, seventy years with only his eyes to show his what little he was allowed to feel. He might not remember it, but there was a learning curve where he had been unable to hide his emotional response, and every anger, every grief, every misery at what he was had resulted in beating, drugging, and ever stronger brainwashing techniques. It was just too hard a conditioning to break. But his eyes showed everything. "That's not it," the soldier said, again, with that impossibly broken look in his eyes, "I'll go with Jac because... unlike everyone else in the world, you, Steve, hell, even Jim and the rest of the Defenders, Jac doesn't look at me like I'm damaged beyond compare. Going with her, even if she doesn't want me to, even if I am not happy about it, reminds me that I still have free will, that I can still decide to do what's right, even if it's hard, or painful. I owe her, Nick, in a way that I don't owe anyone else. I may be in love with Natalia, but she'll always see me as the Winter Soldier first in a lot of ways." Nick listened to his Agent, his friend if men like them could ever have friends, and he thought maybe Bucky was oversimplifying things a bit, but then, Barnes had lived in a very simple world for a long time. Sleep, Awaken, Kill, Disappear, Sleep. Over and over. Forget. Always forget. Never try to remember. Never try to go back. Watching him try now, it was hard, but it was also good, so very good, to see that there was still somewhere to go back to. Bucky had no idea what the Director was thinking as he continued to speak, to put his hands in front of him and look down at their different make ups and say, "I have done so much bad in my life, that I don't know how to go about making those amends, but I can... I can repay the debt I owe Monty and the rest of the Howling Commandos for picking up the slack when Steve and I fell by making sure that his granddaughter is safe, as safe as anyone like us can be, anyone who lives this life sentence. If she decides she can't look at me, or she doesn't want me around, that's ok, it's her call, but she doesn't have to ever see me, for me to make sure she's ok. I'm damn good at not being seen. But whatever she decides, more than anyone, I owe her for reminding me that I'm still human. No matter what they did to me. I'm more than a soldier. More than a killer. More than a victim." Now, he met Nick's sole dark eye and he said, "She reminds me that I'm Bucky Barnes, and I owe her everything for that." |
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6:56 PM Jul 11