thecapitol | There's a humming in the restless summer air (open)

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There's a humming in the restless summer air (open)

Who| MCU!Bucky Barnes and OTA
What| Bucky's having issues, he deals with them by punching things
Where| The training level
When| Couple days prior to the jailbreak
Warnings/Notes| Violence, trauma stuff

Bucky is here under two objectives.

Practically, he needs to practice his familiarity with his body's limitations in this place, he must keep himself sharp and ready because there is a mission soon that will require him to be in top form. However there is a personal need beneath it, something new for a man like him. He needs distraction and rather than allow it to be given to him by others he has made another of his growing list of choices and come here of his volition.

They made him act to stop him thinking, then put him away into storage when those actions were done after a fresh wipe to ensure he remained in pristine condition, like a child's toy lovingly sealed into its wrapping. Though Bucky is done with wipes and cryo tanks he holds that first part to heart; if he acts he will have no time to think and there is a lot he would rather not think about. The things that are disturbing his sleep at night.

So Bucky takes to the training level of the Tribute Centre, making use of the many and varied options it offers. The training dummy's are mercilessly pummelled; various weaponry is put through its paces in expert hands; the holographic targeting practice is something he warms to quickly, throwing knives with deadly precision at multiple light-constructed opponents. If someone asks him, maybe he'll even agree to spar.

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Dennett has no idea why he comes to the training center. He steels himself with the idea he's going to practice...something, or at least get in some kind of physical shape, but he always gets disheartened when he arrives, watching everyone who is, to be mild, vastly better and more suited to the act of killing than he is.

Dennett's the kind of guy who scrapes spiders up on index cards and gently relocates them outside.

He's sure a lot of the others here could critique each other brilliantly, know the names of fighting styles, or punches, at least. He can't. But there is one thing he knows, and that's cybernetics.

And if he's not wrong--which would be quite a change in this place--that is a cybernetic arm. And it's not long before he goes from staring to sidling closer, trying to get a better look. If only the other man would just. hold. still.

Dennet's completely correct and if the silvered metal wasn't enough of a the sound of it's inner workings when Bucky gears up for a particularly fierce blow with his left arm would fill in the gaps -- like when he knocks one of the dummies heads back so hard it almost rips clean off for one. To his consternation he notes that if his arm was at full operational capacity it would have flown right across the room.

The Winter Soldier wasn't one of the deadliest assassin's in existence in his world for nothing and it's not surprising that he quickly catches onto the presence observing him and, while he might have ignored it and carried on regardless, the sense that the man behind the gaze is trying to be covert about approaching him draws his attention. Bucky pulls his arm back and lets it hang by his side as he rounds on the man.

"What?"

Dennett still has to learn that maybe it's not a great idea to be so obvious when it comes to staring, especially in a place where the odds are he'll have to face someone in a death match sooner or later.

And maybe, even, for once, actually try to kill them. He's still working on that part.

Still, however obvious his staring is, he's a little alarmed at the way the other man suddenly seems to whirl to face him. Dangerous cybernetics are much less intimidating when they're pointed toward someone else.

"I. Uh. I was looking at your arm. Who did the work?" Because it wasn't OmniCorp, that was for sure.

There are few people who ever bring up the arm, or admit they were staring at it. He doesn't understand the hesitation on the parts of most, in small ways he likes those who are bold enough to tell the truth but in others it makes him wary. It's his arm, his weapon and he knows there are men here that could take it apart, Capitol or otherwise. There are men who would like to and only one he knows has said he wouldn't.

He doesn't fear this one immediately though, he can think of five different ways off the top of his head to kill him before he could get close, more if he put his mind to it.

"Why do you want to know?"

It's less courage than scientific curiosity, an artist who is admiring the work of another artist. With a little side itch of wanting to take a closer look.

"I, well, I do similar work. Did. I mean, back in Detroit. Limb replacements, prosthetics, bioneurologic interfaces." Here, not so much. Here, he's the guy who got stabbed by an old lady with a knitting needle. "How do you get maintenance on in here? DO you have supplies?" Uh, what do the young people say? 'Asking for a friend'?

"It hasn't needed maintenance." Bucky looks at it for a moment, opening and closing his fingers, hearing the soft clicks of metal slotting into place. The arm had been fine, it had been good throughout his time in this strange place, since he was last deployed. It was the man who failed, not the arm.

There is a question though of how long that will be true. If it does become damaged one day, if it stops working what will he do? He has no idea to its inner workings, there had always been technicians to do that work. "I have no supplies."

"No?" Well, color him impressed. Alex need--or should get, at any rate--regular maintenance. That, of course, only makes him more curious to take a look at it.

"I-I could always try to rustle some up. Uh. If you needed someone to do any work on it." Or something. "Do you have full sensation in it?" Even if he's not going to get to poke at it, he's going to sate some of his curiosity.

Bucky was silent for a good thirty seconds after that offer. It wasn't the first one he'd received and he didn't know how to feel over this interest in his arm, this man said he did thins similar to it... if anyone would ever need to take a look at it they should be someone who knew what they were doing, shouldn't they?

He didn't want to be prodded at anymore, thinking of flashes of men in bowties and white coats, needles and tools and... Stay aware. he came here to avoid getting lost inside his head, didn't he?

"It's mine." Bucky says to be clear, to warn. He won't let anyone try to take the parts of himself he has again. "I feel pressure. Temperature." he was aware of it the same as the biological parts of himself.

In Dennett's defense, he's not a bow tie type of man. But white coats and tools, well... guilty as charged.

"I know." He sounds approving. He's actually impressed with the other's acceptance. So many of his patience struggled with their prostheses, trying to distance them from themselves.

"And tolerances? Can it take heat, pressure, exertion beyond human normal?" His hands are itching to take a closer look of the 'look with your hands' variety, but he's restricting himself to questions. "It's marvelous work, by the way."

"Good." he says, taking that as the man's understanding of the boundaries at work here.

As for the other questions Bucky looks strangely at him as if the answer should be obvious. "It is a weapon, it was made to." what would be the point if it couldn't do those things? He shrugs at the compliment, not knowing how to take it. He didn't make it, didn't choose it.

Dennett has all-too-recently overstepped those boundaries back in Detroit. The public exposure still stings enough that he's in no rush to do it again. He'll just raise his open palms to reinforce that he is absolutely harmless.

"A weapon. And that means...you're a weapon?" Is that how Alex thought of himself? A weapon? What had Dennett done...?

The question is not so clear cut as it once was. The arm is a weapon and so was the body attached to it. For the most part Bucky still thinks of himself that way, something honed for killing at the order except that a weapon is not supposed to think or feel, a weapon should not make its own decisions.

He does all those things now with growing frequency.

"I was made to be." That is the truth.

"But. Did you want to be? I mean, you gave consent, surely?" Alex had been in a near-coma, but even Dennett had gotten his wife to agree, to sign the papers. You couldn't just...do that to a man.

He goes very still after that question.

you gave consent, surely?

Something cold settles in his stomach as he thinks of hard metal closing around his arms and head, thinks of the sound of electricity crackling, thinks of pain and the emptiness that followed after.

"No." He growls out in reply, expression darkening. James Barnes hadn't wanted to be a weapon, he knows that for certain.

It was that stupid kind of question that if it was so 'surely', he wouldn't have asked. It was his guilty conscience speaking, perhaps, but the other man's response doesn't do much to console him.

"O-oh." Well, what else was he supposed to say? "I'm sorry. But. I mean, you have integrated the piece very well." Here's a doctor trying to say something nice. Trying. "It certainly gives you an edge here." Dennett has no edge at all. He's about as edgy as a butterknife.

The question has put a sour note in this conversation, turning Bucky's thoughts exactly to what he'd been wanting to avoid by coming here. His teeth are clenched and he needs to start hitting something inanimate again before he can be sucked into his own head again, or worse take his frustrations out on a person instead.

It's not Dennet's fault, really, on some level Bucky understands that. Even those who do know that his mind and past are a broken jumble of pieces can tread wrongly with him.

"It does." Bucky says shortly and turns around, back to the dummies he was hitting before speaking with Dennet, intent on resuming.

Dennett's used to his patients being, well, anesthetized, and his social skills reflect it. Still he can tell he's said something wrong, wincing as the other eyeballs one of the punching bags--probably imagining it's Dennett's face.

"I-I'm Dennett. Dr Norton. If you ever need any, erm, anyone to look at that. I could. Please. It would make me at least feel I was helping someone." Something he hasn't felt since he'd arrived.

It gives him pause and Bucky looks back at him over his shoulder for a long considering moment.

These people, the one's who want to help without knowing him, without knowing who he is, what he's done... they just do it like it's easy to reach out to a virtual stranger. He doesn't know what to do with them, these simple kind acts.

In the end he simply gives Dennet a nod acknowledging the offer, that he will remember what he said before moving to lay his frustrations into the punching bag.

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There's a humming in the restless summer air (open)

I hope this is okay? LMK if I need to fix things

It's totally fine!

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