Sometimes I wonder what’s real and not. But I usually keep that to myself.
Who: Yang and Bucky (also Zwei and Cap) What: Random meetings of traumatized persons while walking dogs When: Recent Where: A Park Status: complete Rating: PG-13
“Come on, Zwei!” Though, technically, the dog should be on a leash, Yang never bothered with Zwei, he always got out of it eventually. He was well behaved and smart enough to drive a car so Yang decided to go the easy way.
She stuffed her hands in her pockets, trying to enjoy the sunshine. And avoid the jungle gym.
Okay, no, she wasn’t going to let depression win. She pulled a ball out of her pocket and bounced it in her hand. Sometimes just doing things helped. “Zwei, go long!”
And she flung the ball with all her might.
Bucky had taken Cap for a walk, but stopped at the park to try and work on some of his training. He did have a service-dog-in-training vest on, something Bucky had invested in after he’d started training him. It had been a great idea of his to actually get a dog and train it to be his service dog. It gave him something to focus on, especially on his bad days, and it would be a relief for the times his anxiety spiked or he had nightmares. Which, his nightmares were more frequent than he tended to admit.
Today, Bucky wasn’t his best, but he wasn’t his worst either. His long hair was pulled into a ponytail, but the stubble on his face was about a week old, evidence he hadn’t put much effort into his shaving routine. Generally the state of stubble on his face was indicative of his general mood. When he was good, he was clean shaven or only had a couple days’ worth of stubble. He was also happily wearing a sleeveless shirt, which only showed off his rather well developed muscles. His left arm, which was actually made of metal, looked perfectly natural thanks to Jemma getting him that synthetic covering that looked like skin.
“Okay Cap, come on,” Bucky encouraged, trying to get his dog to do a task. At least until a ball went by and Cap took off after it, having been taken off the leash. “Oh come on! Cap! Come back here, that’s not your ball!” He called out, but it was futile. The golden retriever was after the ball that another dog was chasing. As such, he went trotting after his wayward and easily-distracted dog. “Cap, come!”
Zwei had darted after the ball, but suddenly seemed more interested in Cap than the dog. The scene only made Yang laugh, and it felt good to laugh. If anyone knew good and bad days, it was her.
“I’m sorry about that.” She jogged up, bouncy-haired and arm glinting gold in the sun.
Of course Cap didn’t listen to Bucky and instead took an interest in the other dog and started playing with him. Bucky just shook his head in slight exasperation, but he did chuckle a bit before he looked over at the girl. Who...had a metal arm. That was definitely interesting, and he was slightly jealous that she could go around with it while his was...not something that looked like it was from this world. Thus why it was hidden. That and his arm could probably blind people when the sun glinted off of it, so best to not show it off.
“Don’t worry about it. Dogs will be dogs,” he said with a shrug and a warm smile.
Rubbing her shoulder with her right hand, Yang shrugged back. “Give Zwei ten minutes and he’ll have every dog in this park in some kind of dog gang and make a move on that hotdog stand.”
“Kind of glad I’m not the hotdog stand right now,” he commented, keeping an eye on Cap. “And of course we can’t intervene because they won’t listen to us anyways.” He looked back to her. “I’m Bucky,” he greeted, holding his hand out in greeting.
“Yang,” she replied, taking his hand and shaking it. Her robot arm was about as fully functional as Bucky’s, and she didn’t seem that bothered by hers. She’ll never be 100%, but she had more good days than bad ones. At least arm related. “I almost want to let them try for it.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Yang.” Which it was. Bucky was, in most respects, a people-person. Or at least he had been before Hydra had wiped his mind and turned him into a weapon for several decades. That was one reason he’d never really be okay with his metal arm. Not while the red star was there. He’d prefer to just not have a left arm at all, but there wasn’t an easy way to disconnect the thing from his body. “We can let them try up until just before they’re going to jump the cart.”
The detaching really was a nice function. Otherwise it chafed. “Pleasure is mine.”
Honestly, Bucky would have been her type before she realized she wasn’t actually all that into men. But she could still appreciate the aesthetic view. “If we can move fast enough we can stop it.”
“But that begs another question. Do we want to move fast enough to stop it?” Bucky asked, scratching at his cheek a little. He could definitely run fast, faster than most people, but was it worth putting out the exertion?
“Honestly?” Yang looked where the dogs were playing, “I kind of want to see what happens.”
But then she realized that Bucky’s dog was a service dog and she winced, “Shit, he’s your service dog, isn’t he? I’m sorry.”
Yang knew better than most that you didn’t distract service dogs.
Bucky smiled. “It’s alright, he’s not a full service dog. I’m training him to be my service dog. Some days...this is how the training goes.” He shrugged but chuckled a bit. “I could’ve gotten a dog that was already trained, but I wanted to train my own. It gives me something to focus on which really helps on the bad days.”
Of course, Bucky didn’t seem to have any outward disability. To everyone else around him, he had all his limbs intact, and he wasn’t hearing or seeing-impaired either. But despite having lost his arm, it was more the anxiety and post-traumatic stress from Hydra fucking with him that he wanted the service dog for. And Cap was already helping, even if his training was touch and go.
Yang nodded. Zwei…. Was not at all qualified to be a service dog, but he could certainly work as an unofficial helpful dog. “I kind of wish I’d thought of that. Though Zwei never really could take instruction very well.”
Yang flashed a sad smile at the dogs, like she knew what it was like to be lost in your own head. And to be close to someone who had, too.
“Yeah, not every dog is able to be a service dog. It took me a little while to find Cap, but I’m definitely glad I did. It...definitely helps.” Bucky wouldn’t say he got lost in his own head, but the murders he’d committed, the decades of a life that had been stripped away from him to be someone’s weapon had a way of hollowing him out some days. But that’s where Clara, Cap and Jemma came into play. Jemma had helped deprogram him so Hydra couldn’t activate the Winter Soldier anymore. Clara kept him sane. And Cap gave him something else to focus on.
“Did you know right away he was the one?” Yang asked, watching as Zwei successfully conned some poor kid out of their hot dog. Few could resist those puppy eyes. At least Zwei shared?
She needed help but didn’t think she needed the kind of help a service dog could bring, so she was just curious and nonjudgemental. Sure, Bucky looked fine, but that didn’t mean he was, or that he didn’t need the dog.
“Yeah, I did. I love dogs, and liked all the ones I looked at, but none of them felt quite right. But this guy? I knew from the moment I saw him.” Of course, that’s not how it always went. Sometimes the animal picked the human, sometimes the other way around, sometimes it was mutual. With Cap, it had been a mutual picking.
Bucky moved his left arm a bit, and while it looked perfectly fine, the disguise couldn’t exactly disguise the sounds it made. It definitely sounded mechanical, and probably more like something out of a sci-fi movie.
“You looked at each other and it was true love, I got it.” Yang grinned at him. Though her eyes did snap to his left arm for a second, she didn’t call attention to it. She could joke now about her arm, but it hadn’t always been the case and she’d spent months in varying degrees of shame and self-consciousness.
“I keep thinking I want to find a friend for Zwei, but it would mostly be for me and my sister.”
“Pretty much, but don’t tell my girlfriend that. She might get jealous,” Bucky said with a wink. There had been an awkward stage when he’d first gotten the dog and Cap hadn’t liked Clara. But Cap eventually accepted her, so everything was fine again. Bucky also noticed Yang look at his arm, obviously she heard the sounds it made. Luckily they could only be heard by someone standing close to him so he could get by with it most of the time.
Bucky was self-conscious, but it was definitely for more than just losing his arm. If falling from a train on a mountain wasn’t traumatic enough, getting a metal arm welded onto you by assholes that took away his memories made it even worse.
“I lost my arm, too. All the way to my shoulder.” He commented. He glanced at her metal arm again. “You have an awesome arm, though. I like the color scheme.”
“I’m sure she’ll be fine. I’ve got a friend who’s a little adverse to dogs but Zwei loves the hell out of her.” And then there’s been Weiss who’d unexpectedly fallen in love with Zwei.
“I lost mine a little lower,” she replied, with an understanding look. “Want a closer look? I painted it myself.”
“Clara and Cap get along now, so it’s all good.” The fact that Clara didn’t have a heartbeat and so forth had unnerved the dog, but eventually he just accepted it. After all, Clara did help Bucky so Clara had become good people to Cap.
“You painted it yourself? That’s pretty cool. I wish mine could take some paint. I’m just lucky I got this disguise to make it look like a normal arm. Otherwise I’d be wearing long sleeves all summer and die due to heat.” He chuckled a little.
Yang detached her arm and held it up for inspection, “It was a bit tricky but some spray paint and stencil work got the job done.” She didn’t know if she’d accept a normal looking arm at this point. The gold and black were as much a part of her as her hair was now. “I was kinda afraid the paint might get into some of the joints and make them sticky, but the tech really took it well.”
Bucky studied the arm when she held it up. It was really nicely crafted, and the paint made it look pretty good as well. “I like it. Mine is so shiny you’d go blind from the sun reflecting off of it right now. Though I’d rather not have an arm at all, but I don’t have a choice in the matter. My arm isn’t detachable.” Of course, if he really wanted, he could ask Jemma to do a scan that would let them determine if his arm could be removed without causing further damage to him. But he didn’t really want to go through that kind of trouble, or surgery, to have it removed.
Besides, he wouldn’t put it past Hydra to have a killswitch involved in removing his arm or something.
“I’m sorry. I’ve got an option, at least. And it took me a few weeks to get up the nerve and energy to actually try it.” She still preferred to have it off at home, or when hanging with friends, so she got the desire not to have it. And it sounded like there was more to the story if it wasn’t detachable. It didn’t seem right that he didn’t have a choice.
“Yeah, having an option would be nice.” Bucky lifted his left arm again, looking at it as he clenched and unclenched his fist. “But having the metal arm wasn’t my choice in the first place. In fact, I should have died. Anyone else would have died in my situation.” He knew that it was only his Super Soldier status that had allowed him to even survive the fall. And even then, he was half-dead when he was found.
“Maybe you’re just a survivor.” Or maybe it hadn’t been his choice to survive, either. But sometimes people find reasons to survive even when they don’t want to. Hers had been her family and her team. “Or at least had reasons to stay alive.”
“Neither. I was...well, let’s just say I had my memories wiped and I was made into a weapon. The people that did that to me gave me this arm. It’s a symbol of what they made me into.” And that was just putting it mildly. Bucky’s memory had been wiped repeatedly over a period of several decades. It was probably a miracle he didn’t have brain damage from such procedures.
“Shit. I’m sorry if I brought back bad memories.” While it was something Yang had never heard of from her dreams, it was also something she could see their enemies actually doing. “There was this girl in my dreams. She could make people see what she wanted them to see. Made me think I was being attacked, so I defended myself. Only the rest of the world saw me attack a downed opponent unprovoked.”
And she hadn’t known for so long until Ruby had told her about that. And then it all made sense. “You’d think memories were the things we’d have the most protected.”
“It’s fine.” Well, it wasn’t really, but he didn’t want to get into it. Especially not with someone he’d just met. Bucky’s experience with Hydra was not something he liked talking about if he could help it. The memories of it were always there, but today they’d been closer to the surface to begin with. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”
Bucky took a little breath. “One would think, but they are the most fragile part about us. A bump to the head or the right kind of equipment and you can’t remember things.”
Knowing better than to pursue a subject that made someone uncomfortable, Yang let it alone. Even if she was a little curious and that natural part of her that Desperately Wanted To Help People kept hitting her with a hammer, “Sometimes I wonder what’s real and not. But I usually keep that to myself.”
At least Emerald wasn’t in the OC.
“Sometimes I still feel like a weapon and not a person, so I get it.” The memories of being the Winter Soldier were terrible ones, and sometimes it felt like a dissociative experience, but it had still been him. He killed all those people and did what Hydra wanted him to do. It weighed heavily on him, though he was working through it.
Yang tilted her head, tongue sticking out the corner of her mouth as she thought. Finally, she smiled brightly, “You know what’ll cure what ails us, at least for now?”
She jerked her thumb towards the hotdog vendor, “Hot dogs and watching the puppers have a good time.”
Bucky looked at Yang, then looked over at the dogs that were definitely looking like they were enjoying themselves. And, well, he didn’t have the heart to tear Cap away from his fun at the moment. He could work on more training later. Besides, being social was a good thing, right?
“You know what, I think you’ve got a brilliant idea there.” He said with a smile.