The Pen is Mightier! (penismightier) wrote in chaotic_library, @ 2014-11-16 12:28:00 |
|
|||
Current music: | Chase Holfelder - Every Breath You Take |
[Bucky Barnes, Cast; R] In Derelict Sidings The Poppies Entwine
Character/Series: Bucky Barnes, Cast; Marvel Cinematic Universe
Rating: R
Notes: I should probably be denying some of these things about Nebraska, but I really can't, and I'm not sure I want to. Also, the liquid chicken truck is a real thing. I passed it going down to Texas one year and completely wtf'd at it.
Title: In Derelict Sidings The Poppies Entwine: Chapter 8
Author: yuuo
Word Count: 3961
Summary: Indiana quickly faded into Illinois and the land was very, very boring.
Indiana quickly faded into Illinois and the land was very, very boring. There were some patches of trees, and a lot of farmland. Fields of dead, brown earth with the leftover stalks of corn patterning the seemingly endless dirt. How did people live out there?
They'd stopped for breakfast shortly before hitting Chicago; neither Steve nor Bucky were pleased with an on-the-go meal that amounted to fast food on the road. Bucky was almost tempted to just not eat at all and toss it out the window, but his stomach told him that it'd rebel violently at him if he did, so he choked it down.
Natasha glanced between him and the road a few times, catching his attention. Once he was looking at her, her lips curled up in an amused smile. "Don't like the food?"
Bucky wrinkled his nose, chewing slowly because if he chewed any faster, he might throw up. He glanced back at Steve, who looked about the same. Then he looked back at Natasha, forcing himself to swallow. "How the hell does the twenty-first century stand this shit?" he demanded.
"Personally? Necessity," she said. "It's not great, but it's better than nothing when you're on a mission and you don't have the time and freedom to eat at a proper place or cook for yourself."
Steve leaned around the driver's seat. "What about a grocery store deli? They'd have better food than McDonald's."
Natasha started to answer, but paused before more than a word could get out, looking up at her rearview mirror. She swore in Russian, then turned on her turn signal and started pulling over to the shoulder.
Bucky half-turned in his seat, feeling the blood drain from his face at the flashing lights of a patrol car. "Steve, pull up your hood," he said, doing the same and tucking his hair back in it as much as possible. He dumped what little was left of that awful thing they called food in the to-go bag, then put on his gloves, and kept his hands still in his lap.
"Hand me my purse, Steve?" Natasha asked, reaching back while keeping an eye on the patrol car behind them. Once Steve had grabbed it off the floor behind Bucky's seat and handed it to her, she started digging in it, pulling out her wallet. "Just stay quiet, you two," she said, grabbing an ID. "Especially you, Rogers."
Steve made a strangled noise of indignation, but didn't say anything as Bucky shot him a warning look. He slumped back in his seat and pulled his hood down over his eyes. Satisfied that Natasha would only have to worry about dealing with the law and not about how Steve or Bucky might foul things up, Bucky pulled is hood forward a bit more, just enough to mostly hide his face without keeping him from seeing what was going on.
Natasha opened the window, letting in a blast of cold wind. She made a point of rubbing her arms when the officer ducked his head to talk to her. "Is something wrong, Officer?"
"Afternoon, ma'am," he said. "Did you know you were driving with a broken taillight?"
Bucky met Natasha's eyes as she looked back at him, pretending (at least he thought she was pretending) to be very confused, before she looked back at the officer. "Which one? I just changed them both."
"Your driver side light," the officer said.
Bucky studied him, taking note of the dark green pants and the brown coat that hid everything of the tan shirt but the collar, and the flat, wide-brimmed hat. It was a strange combination of colors, although Bucky had definitely seen worse. He was small, and probably very easy to overpower, even without needing to be a super soldier or a seasoned assassin.
There was always the matter of the officer's gun that Bucky couldn't see from that angle, but that didn't seem much of a problem; all three of them would be able to get that gun before the officer could, if it came to that.
Bucky had a feeling Natasha would prefer it didn't come to that. Bucky wasn't particularly interested in tangling with law enforcement, especially not when he was supposed to be keeping his head down. But it was good to size up a potential threat before it became a real threat.
"I think I have a spare in the trunk," Natasha said. She waited patiently while the officer moved out of the way of the door, his hand hovering just over his hip, then got out. Bucky glanced back at Steve, who'd been watching out of his window, then turned a bit more in his seat to watch Natasha and the officer move around to the trunk.
The trunk popped open, blocking the view through the back window, which made Bucky very nervous. Natasha could more than handle things if it went south, but Bucky didn't like not being able to see what was going on in a potentially hostile situation. It helped absolutely nothing that the bag with their weapons- including Steve's very recognizable shield -was now right under the nose of an officer of the law.
"Oh, here we go," Natasha's voice said, just barely audible over the traffic noise. "It wasn't screwed in tight." There was some clunking in the back of the car, then silence from her and the officer for a moment. "There, does that work now?"
"Looks like it to me, ma'am," the officer said. "Thank you. Drive safely, it's a holiday."
"Thanks for the warning," Natasha said. "You stay safe, too. Holidays bring out the loonies."
Bucky had to admit, Natasha was very good at sounding completely not like herself when she wanted to. He didn't think she'd normally use the word 'loonies', but she sounded like any other normal person and not an emotionally reserved spy and assassin.
The officer's voice was too distant by that point for Bucky to hear what was said, but he assumed it was nothing bad, as Natasha rejoined them in the car. She sighed, thunking her head on the steering wheel. "I hate false alarms almost more than the real ones," she said, then sat up and rolled her window up.
Bucky watched the patrol car turn off its lights and pull back out on the road, then looked at Natasha. "'Loonies'?"
Natasha smirked, putting her ID away and dropping her purse on the floor behind Bucky's seat. "Just showing concern. And speaking truth. People get crazy on the roads around holidays."
Steve leaned forward. "How long before we're past Chicago?"
Natasha buckled, then pulled back out onto the interstate. "About fifteen minutes, assuming I don't get pulled over again." She shook her head. "I don't know how that light came loose."
"Old car?" Steve suggested. "This thing looks like it's seen some mileage."
"It's an '02 Chevy. But the engine is brand new. It blends in with where we're going better than a nicer car would."
"So we're going to the slums," Bucky said.
Natasha frowned. "No. Just here in the Midwest." She looked over at him. "Don't insult my car, she's getting you to safety. And no, I'm not telling you where in the Midwest until we're past Chicago."
"That's more than you've told us so far," Steve said, sitting back.
Bucky looked between them, but Steve wasn't pushing Natasha, and for her part, she wasn't doing anything but focusing on the road. Bucky decided if Steve thought he wouldn't get anywhere with her, Bucky probably wouldn't, either. So he sat back and looked out the window, watching the twists and turns and exits of the interstate passing by a large city and the endless amount of traffic.
He decided to shut his mind off, to go into total standby mode, like he had before on missions for Hydra. He knew about as much, taken from one location to another, not sure where he was, or even really where he was going until it was needed. It was an unpleasant trip down memory lane, but it was exactly what was happening this time. He didn't know where he was going, he didn't even really know why except that it was part of 'the mission'. His mission this time was to hide. Something had gotten out, what exactly, he wasn't sure, but something that linked him to Hydra's work, something that would set him up as Public Enemy Number One, would endanger him, and probably Steve, as well.
But he had no idea what had gotten out. How much. Who had leaked it. And it bothered him that someone else knew before he did, someone knew to be watching for it.
A lot of questions, and so far, not one answer forthcoming. If she weren't the one responsible for getting him to safety, he'd be tempted to beat the information out of Natasha and then act upon it on his own. But no matter how frustrated he was with the situation, right now, she was his best chance. She had the contacts set up, she had the safe house set up, she had the resources.
So he was best off not thinking and focusing on their surroundings in case something happened that he might be able to do something to fix. It wasn't likely, but you never knew when a masked assassin might jump on your car and steal your steering wheel.
Bucky was pretty sure he was probably the only one weird enough to think of that.
It took a bit longer than fifteen minutes to get past Chicago; there was a wreck that closed down the right two lanes, leaving traffic crawling. Bucky bit back on his irritation at the slowed pace, making himself disappear behind his unhealthy self-defense mechanism of turning off everything. To where nothing bothered him. To where there was no sign of humanity. To where there only existed the Winter Soldier.
He'd pay for it later, but it was the only way he knew how to deal with the anxiety that didn't result in locking himself in the bathroom, or hiding up on the roof. Neither of which was an option.
It was the captain that finally snapped him out of that distant place, not by addressing him directly, but by addressing the mission head. "Okay, we've been past Chicago for ten minutes," he said. "Where're we going?"
Bucky looked back at him, realizing that he had no idea how that much time had passed without him noticing, but the question brought him back from that dark place he'd been hiding in. He looked at Natasha, who was no longer 'the mission head', but a person with a name again.
"Nebraska," she said, signaling a lane change and passing a particularly slow truck with a tanker trailer that had the words 'Haulin' Liquid Chicken' painted on the side. Bucky quickly decided he didn't want to know what constituted 'liquid chicken'.
Steve- no longer 'the captain' -looked at Bucky. "So," he said, and Bucky couldn't tell if Steve looked amused, or was trying to be amused and actually wasn't. "Maybe you shouldn't have vetoed it when we were looking for a place to go on vacation, Buck."
Bucky rolled his eyes. "Because I'm sure I'd love the opportunity to visit a cornfield twice."
Natasha glanced just over her shoulder, in a direction somewhere between Steve and Bucky. "You'd better learn to love that cornfield. I don't know how long we're staying."
"Okay," Steve said. "You've got my attention. Why Nebraska? There are a billion other places to go."
"Few reasons," Natasha said, keeping her eyes on the road. "For one, I've already been living there awhile for the job I temporarily abandoned to get you two. Clint and I are working for a division of Homeland Security that handles the dirty work. He's in Syria, passing intelligence along to me, and I pass it to Homeland. The Islamic State already knows most of the division's normal contacts, so I'm playing the unlisted number."
Something didn't add up right there to Bucky. "So again, why Nebraska?"
"Nebraska's got the most advanced and secure telecommunications system in the nation, especially in Omaha. You boys should remember SAC getting set up in Offutt. That was back in your time."
Steve and Bucky exchanged a look, before turning back to Natasha. "What is SAC and are you sure that was back in the forties?" Steve asked, sounding about as confused as Bucky felt.
Natasha looked surprised, glancing between them. "Strategic Air Command? It was set up- wait, what year did you two go under?"
"Nineteen forty-five," Steve answered.
"That'd explain it," she said. "SAC came a couple years later. Anyway, the lines offer the security we needed. We're not going to Omaha, that's too close to camping in the military's backyard. Homeland would be very cross with us if we let on to everyone else what we're doing. So I'm using the lines between Lincoln and Omaha. We'll need these lines to keep a secure connection to my contact in this mess."
"You said there were other reasons," Bucky said.
She smiled faintly. "The lines are the main one. But Lincoln is a good place to hide right now. It's still football season, and every Saturday home game, that stadium houses over ninety thousand people. Third biggest city in the state, and that's not an exaggeration. We'll get you two some Husker clothes, you'll blend in." Then she made a noise that might've almost been a laugh. "Besides, Clint already had a place set up there. He likes college football and Lincoln is college football's Mecca."
Since Bucky didn't know Barton personally, had only heard a few things about him here and there, he had no real reaction that, but Steve sure as hell did. "Clint likes football?"
"Just college," Natasha said. "I have no idea where that interest came from. He's never said. He's just told me that I am morally and legally obligated to keep him up to date on the Huskers' scores. I have to listen to those dumb games every Saturday."
"The things we do for love," Bucky said, under his breath but not really.
Natasha glanced at him, then up into her rearview mirror. "You would know."
Bucky declined saying anything.
They made two stops in Iowa: one at a rest stop off I-80 to stretch, use the facilities, and so Natasha could change their Illinois plates for Nebraska plates, and then one in Des Moines for gas, which Steve insisted on paying for, and for some road food. And that road food just made Bucky's black little heart go pitter-patter.
It was another three hours from Des Moines to Lincoln, and Bucky sorely wished for his tablet to read on, or something. Natasha was quiet, focusing on driving, and Steve seemed to be in the same boat as Bucky: nothing to do, but nothing really to say, either. They were on a mission, they knew where they were going, and they'd find out more once they got there. Nothing to do in the meantime but wait.
So he simply shut down again.
Omaha passed by quickly; it may have been a 'big' city as far as the Midwest went, but by east coast standards, it wasn't much to look at. And then it was more cornfields, empty and stripped bare by the cold weather, and dead, yellow prairie grass in the ditches. Although there were a surprising number of trees. He made a mental note to find out why a farming state on the Great Plains had so damn many trees.
They eventually turned off the interstate and onto a highway that presumably led into town. He eyed the horizon critically, seeing very little that indicated that Lincoln was bigger than any other rural town they'd gone by. They passed another cornfield.
"Didn't we just pass a city limits sign?" Steve said from the backseat, and Bucky glanced back at him, then back out the window.
"We did," Natasha said. "And yes, there's a cornfield in town. A couple, actually. One's for the agriculture college, though."
What the hell kind of city had a cornfield inside city limits?
Lincoln, apparently, and he was going to be spending an undetermined amount of time there. Bunnies and goddamn flowers.
Signs of life slowly appeared, the farther in they went, until Natasha was driving along a busy street, and right into downtown. Downtown was, fortunately, a bit more exciting than the cornfields had been, but it was small compared to what Bucky was used to, growing up in Brooklyn, and later living in DC. But it had some tall buildings, and a ton of one-way streets, just to make things confusing. It was almost like a real city.
Almost.
Bucky switched mental gears, pulling himself back from the proverbial coma he'd tossed himself into, noticing that there were a lot of people walking around downtown- most of them in dressed in red- for being Thanksgiving. Then he realized why: there was a different bar or restaurant every few building suites. Most of the people he saw looked roughly college-aged, and road signs indicated that the university was very nearby.
So much for people getting the holiday off. Bucky still didn't understand that.
Natasha pulled into a parking lot marked 'private parking' in what looked like an older part of downtown. Nearby, Bucky could hear a train. "Sorry it's not glamorous," she said, putting the car in park and shutting it off. "We didn't want to stand out."
"Our place wasn't exactly a penthouse either," Steve said, getting out.
Natasha and Bucky joined him at the trunk. "It was nice enough," she said, unlocking the trunk. "Bet my place is cheaper, though. How much do you pay? Couple thousand?"
Bucky grabbed the weapons bag again, leaving Steve to take care of their regular bags, neither of which were very big, nor very heavy. "Little less than that. Why?"
"Mine's four hundred, with cable included."
While Bucky's eyebrows about shot up to his hairline, Steve looked over at him. "We're living in the wrong part of the country."
Bucky shot him a dirty look. "Let's move here and be neighbors with farmland and football fanatics. Sounds like my idea of a good time."
"And college students who will drive you batty," Natasha said as she shut the trunk, her bag shouldered. She glanced around, then led them down the back street about a block. "It's not so bad, as long as you aren't allergic to corn pollen." She paused outside a building with a secured entrance and typed in the code by the door. "Like I am."
Steve grabbed the top edge of the door over her head once she got it open, allowing her to lead them in. "This is a bad place to be if you're allergic to corn," he said.
"I live on benadryl during the seven months of the year where it's not too cold for pollens," she said, heading up the stairs. "This place isn't my first choice. But, like I said, we needed the state's telecomm systems, and Clint has a better chance of not getting targeted out in Syria as a man than I would as a woman. So, here I am."
"Here you are, listening to football games every week," Bucky said, oh so helpfully and not laughing at her at all.
She rolled her eyes, stopping in front of her apartment and unlocking it. "My life's joy," she said, letting them in. "Excuse any mess, I packed and left as soon as I saw the news."
"What mess?" Steve asked, looking around.
The living space was smaller than their own apartment, and even less furnished, with a couch somewhat near the door, a rather large desk against a wall, and on the opposite side of the room from the front door was the kitchen that seemed to have the mandatory fridge, stove, and dishwasher with sink by it, and about three square feet of counter on which to work. Off to the side was a split hallway that Bucky assumed led to the bedroom and the bathroom, respectively, with what might've been a linen closet in between.
"That mess," she said, motioning to the kitchen. There was a half-full coffee pot sitting on the counter, and it looked like a skillet and a couple other small dishes in the sink. "Put your stuff on the couch for now. We'll find a better place for it later."
Bucky set the bag he was carrying down on the floor between the couch and the wall. He eyed the couch and the floor in front of it, and then pointed at Steve. "You get the couch, I'm claiming the floor, and don't you dare try to argue with me this time."
Before Steve could do more than scowl and open his mouth to argue, Natasha cut in. "It's a sleeper couch," she said. "Unless you two have serious objections to sharing a bed for more than a crash in a hotel, it's big enough for two."
Steve shot Bucky one of those 'I won neener neener' looks that he'd had perfected since childhood. "You're not sleeping on the floor."
Bucky drew in a deep breath, glaring at Steve on the principle of that stupid look alone. "I hate you."
"No, you don't," Steve said with a shit-eating grin. "You're just glowing with love for me."
Bucky looked at Natasha. "Mind if I smother him? I know how to hide bodies."
Natasha looked like she wanted to smile, but was just too tired to. "No killing in my apartment. I'm trying to avoid the law right now." She sat down at the desk, looking up at the computer monitor that was mounted up on the wall and tilted down towards her, like she wasn't sure she wanted to turn the system on. Bucky didn't blame her, she'd just driven eighteen(ish) hours with only four hours of sleep in the last almost forty. That'd wear almost anyone out.
But finally, she booted up the computer, and looked over at the sink of dishes. "We're going to have to go grocery shopping tomorrow," she said, sounding like she was thinking aloud rather than to them. "Everything in the fridge is probably spoiled." Her face scrunched up in annoyance. "And tomorrow's a home game. That should be fun."
Steve and Bucky said nothing as they walked over to flank her, letting her talk, and occasionally watching the monitor. "Natasha," Steve said, then pointed up at the screen when it showed the login page.
"Hm?" She looked up at him, then up at the screen. "Oh." She logged in, and fiddled around with some programs that Bucky didn't recognize, but didn't need to to see that they were, in order: a music player, a telecomm program, and a ready game of solitaire in the background.
"Please be around," she muttered, typing away in the telecomm program. A Homeland Security sigil showed up in a large box to one side, Natasha- with Steve and Bucky partly visible -on the computer's camera in a smaller one in the corner, and a text box under the sigil with a scrambled number. After a second, the program pinged. "Thank god," she said. "Talk to me, Carter."
Bucky barely had time to process that the name 'Carter' was entirely too familiar when a blonde-haired, brown-eyed woman's face appeared where the sigil had been. She looked familiar, not as much as her name was, but he couldn't place her.
Steve recognized her, though. "Sharon?"