thecapitol | Cruelty is in waking [Open]

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Cruelty is in waking [Open]

Who| Bucky Barnes (MCU) and Steve Rogers, Bucky and OTA
What| Bucky arrives back in the Capitol and luckily runs into Steve first, later in the week he's exploring the training centre
Where| Various locations in the training centre
When| Through week six after Bucky comes back from the dead
Warnings/Notes| Amnesia, references to trauma/violence, angst everywhere. Reply in your chosen format and I shall reciprocate!

Arrival:

He has to get out.

That thought is what is driving him forwards, has driven him forwards since he woke up and stared at two mismatched hands and thought, I've been here before. Even an asset like him knows that there are some things you aren't supposed to wake up from.

He crashed out of the too large and too soft bed soon after, hit the floor and then stumbled up, disturbed more by the sight of luxury than he would have been to find an ice-encrusted chamber and a cruel metal chair waiting for him. Somehow he'd been able to focus enough to rip open the wardrobe, snapping the hinges on the door as he rifled through, found jeans and boots that fit, a shirt and then a jacket with a hood he yanked up and tugged as far over his face as it would go. A glove was yanked unceremoniously over his metal hand.

If anyone had been in the District 1 suite to witness they would have seen the Soldier emerge from his room and barrel towards the door and out into the hallway beyond...

Prompt A: District 1 suite

There is a space here that is his. The one he woke up in.

Somewhat in better mind Bucky decides it's something he should get used to, though he's unsure if it will mean anything. It's his in name only, just like the cryo-chamber was his, like the chair was -- only by merit that no one else was put ever in there. Two days and he's shaved and somewhat more presentable than he has been for weeks and looking a damn sight better than the ghost of a man who haunted the arena for two weeks, though still trying to hide underneath a hood as he paces through the door.

Promt B: The Training Center

He finds the highest of the climbing platforms and sequesters himself there. Coming here he had no intention of fighting, distrustful of his own ability to hold back, he's come to observe. The arena is going to happen again, he's learned, and with little else to occupy him than follow Steve around on the other man's business while hoping to learn something about himself he's decided to try and do something useful instead.

Up here he can sit and watch, gauge how the other tributes fight, what they know and try to gain an estimate of their weaknesses. Few seem to use the climbing platforms and up above he can tuck himself away into the shadows, intending to be undisturbed as he conducts his reconnaissance.

Prompt C: The rooftop

Of all the places he's explored in the training centre (the city still waits to be seen) he decides he likes this one the best. It's quiet. Big enough with secluded spots where he can avoid others. At this time of year it's also warm with the sun beating down, the heat unimpeded by the barely visible glimmer of the force fields.

He finds a secluded spot and sits on the ground with his back to a wooden wall that has plants crawling up it, ensuring no one can come at him from behind and giving him a clear view of anything approaching from the front.

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His eyes open from where he'd had his head tilted back against the wall, face soaking up the suns rays. Bucky moves his head and looks right back at Joel, his expression in no way mirrors the anger the older man is displaying. If there's an expression to be found there it might be called light puzzlement.

It takes a moment for the memory to kickstart. He killed this man, attacked him and the girl with him, killed him right before Bucky had felt something puncture through his flesh and collapsed into blackness himself.

Coming back from the dead himself had been troubling, knowing Steve had come back relieving; seeing one of his own victims in his long history of murder back for the first time? His eyes widen in his face.

Then he nods in acknowledgement, unsure what he's supposed to say, if anything.

Joel, on the other hand, knows exactly who he's looking at - even if the guy looks weirdly like that other guy who he also killed - the one who tried to kill the false Sarah.

At least, they both have metal arms, which is weird.

But that doesn't matter. All that matters is Joel telling this guy off.

"Don't you ever come near me or my kid again, you hear me?" he growls.

The threat gets him off the ground and onto his feet, hair hanging loose over his face as he continues to look at Joel. There's still no visible aggression but there is readiness in case this becomes more than words.

"It was the mission directive." he says, as if that explains everything.

"Mission directive?" Perhaps it's because of what happened in the arena that that night, twenty years ago, is so fresh in his mind - though he'd react the same to such a statement, regardless.

It's all Joel can do to keep from taking a swing at this guy. If he had a gun, he'd be hard-pressed not to shoot him on the spot. Soldiers - especially soldiers who just blindly follow orders - are nothing but a threat, in Joel's mind. A threat that needs to be eliminated.

"You people," he says, contempt dripping from every word. "Someone in a fancy uniform tells you to jump, and you say how high. Doin' what you're told, then actin' like because someone gave you the order, it's not your responsibility when innocent kids die. Come near mine again, and I will gut you. Slowly."

It's not a bluff - everything about Joel's voice and stance says that he knows exactly what he's saying, and he is fully prepared to follow through with it.

"Eliminate all other combatants until only one remains." Bucky says dully, his eyes intently focused on Joel. It's the gaze of the Winter Soldier, scanning over the other man and weighing him up in the wake of an explicit threat.

In the arena both of them had been wounded and starving as well as dehydrated from the unrelenting heat. Here they are both healthy and whole but for the limitations placed on Bucky by the Capitol, diluting his strength and speed to something closer to an average human level. Joel is physically older than him and likely without the extensive combat training the Soldier has though he is still a practiced fighter from what Bucky can remember of that last fight, the details blurred by his own fractured state.

His conclusion is he could kill Joel quickly if he decided to make good on the threat.

Innocent kids.

Something turns over in him uneasily. The anger in Joel's face and voice, the protectiveness he displays for the girl the Soldier would almost certainly have killed as well had he gotten the chance... he blinks in the sunlight, wonders when it got so bright.

"I understand." that's what Bucky says, voice somehow still level as he states a clear acceptance of the condition Joel has laid down.

He repeats the words back, like that's all the answer necessary. Like what Joel just said flew right over his head. What a fuckin' piece of shit, Joel thinks to himself. There's nothing he hates more than these assholes. The ones who can't even be bothered to think for themselves, to own their actions.

Joel knows what it is to do terrible things. But when he does them, he does them on his terms. For his own reasons. To survive, usually, but no matter what, the reasons are always his. And so are the choices. No one makes his choices for him.

He's got no illusions about being a good man, but at least he's a man who doesn't hide behind the veneer of 'following orders'.

"You make the choice, asshole," he growls. "It's on you. Don't feed me that bullshit, you know how many tributes here won't even kill anyone? It's on you. Nobody else. Or are you a robot the Capitol programmed?"

Joel doesn't know just how accurate a lot of his judgement is about the man before him. The one thing he is wrong on is how much of a choice Bucky ever had.

"No." he answers and this is in reference to how many tributes won't kill, he has no idea and takes the question literally.

As for the rest... others programmed him long before the Capitol ever got possession of the Winter Soldier and he'd spurned his original owners as the foundations of their house burned to the ground. Now he's decided he doesn't like these new ones any better. "I am not... theirs."

"Then I guess it's on you whether you follow their rules or not, ain't it? It's on you if you hurt an innocent kid, kill one even. It's on your conscience."

Joel might be a bit of a hypocrite, given the current state of his conscience - or lack thereof, after so many years. But he sees his advantage and presses it. He's not above far worse than hypocrisy if he thinks it'll help keep Ellie safe.

It's on him.

Because he has a choice. He does have a choice now.

He hadn't thought when they first sent him into the arena, believing that his short-lived freedom was ended and maybe he was being punished for not coming to heel like a good dog when he should have. Now he knows better, or so he's told, he doesn't have to play the game.

"I..." he feels lost, helpless in the face of Joel's convictions, in a situation where he can't solve it by the Winter Soldier's methods. The Winter Soldier doesn't have a conscience -- but Bucky Barnes might. "I don't know how."

He says the words slowly, considerately, like they're a revelation.

"You don't know how?" Joel scowls at him even darker if possible, his arms crossing over his chest. He is not a man to lash out physically in anger - but verbally, he's not above doing. To aim his words where they'll hurt the most.

"It's simple, pal. You see my kid - you see any kid - you walk away. Or you make the other choice, but I guarantee it won't end well for you."

"I was not allowed." A conscience was problematic, it could lead to hesitation on the part of the Asset. He flexes his hands again, testing the fluidity of movement, catalogues his own well being and the environment around them, seeks patterns and clear cut routes.

If nothing else he can understand a threat; killing children would lead to repercussion, he could accept that. The Soldier only debates Joel's certainty on how things would end after, particularly when he so obvious designates himself as an enemy -- the clearest course would be to eliminate him first. The thing that he is missing is why, "Why are there children?"

If they are not viable targets, if it is wrong to kill them.

"Why?" Joel gives the other man a baffled look - if he was talking to a child, his reaction would be different. He wouldn't expect a child to necessarily understand how terrible the world can be. But a grown man, one so willing to attack and kill, what kind of a question is that from such a person?

"Because these people are sick psychos who enjoy watching people suffer," he says. "And a real man will make his own decisions, own them, accept responsibility for what he does, instead of whining that he's just following the rules."

"And that's... wrong?" he looks for confirmation with this idea. Killing children is wrong, the Capitol puts children into the arena to die and so they are wrong. It lines up, forms a connection and creates a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach that he doesn't know what to call.

It's wrong.

"Didn't you ever learn this stuff before?" Joel asks, frowning deeply at him. He appreciates the irony of him having to school a grown man about basic morality - Joel doesn't really have much in the way of morals, hasn't for a long time. Morality is mostly a weakness that can get you killed.

But there are still a few lines he won't cross, even though he rarely admits to that.

"No." he watched Joel, still considering what he had been told. Maybe once he had known this, before -- he doesn't think that information is relevant though. "I think it would have..." he hesitates, searching for the word to describe exactly why Hydra wouldn't have wanted their best asset operating under rules like that, "...compromised my purpose."

"Jesus Christ, do they actually brainwash the soldiers where you come from or somethin'?" Joel is pretty incredulous - he's not sure which is worse, indoctrination, or people just being such assholes that they abuse whatever power they're given because they feel like it.

That reaction is something he's starting to get used to when people learn what he is, what was done to him. Moreso he's starting to understand it himself, beginning with the first spark of anger he felt in himself when he saw the life of the man he was.

"They made weapons." Bucky tells him, his voice even, face betraying nothing -- his left hand though, tightens into a fist. "I'm one of them."

What a fucking joke. Christ. Joel shakes his head, because while he may feel a vague sense of pity for this guy if it's true, that still doesn't excuse what he did back in the arena.

"And now you're a tool," he growls out. "But you can make your own choices. Better think about that, next time you ambush a child."

With that, he turns to leave. He doesn't have anything more to say.

Bucky doesn't answer, doesn't stop him. He stands and watches until Joel is out of sight, longer past then in case the other man leaving was a ploy, he can wait a long time. Nothing comes however and eventually he turns and looks at his sunning spot considerately.

Not as isolated as he thought, he can find another.

Thoughts of this conversation however, they might not be so easy to leave behind.

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