the soldier. (![]() ![]() @ 2014-10-05 20:52:00 |
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The worst moments were the ones where he was left alone.
As high up as Steve’s apartment was in the Tower, the sounds of the city were left far behind, leaving only a muffled silence which James grew increasingly loath to disturb, as if the crash of his still-limp cybernetic arm against a doorframe as he moved from living room to kitchen was the greatest possible assault his senses could endure.
-- which was a thought both amusing and allaying (the latter, though, in a mind-shattering sort of way).
Still, he hated it. The silence. It was a negative space for thoughts to expand into. One could only attempt to use the internet for so long before the impression of being monitored (and of course he was monitored; James didn’t fully understand yet who or what he was, but he certainly knew that he was dangerous enough to be watched despite Steve’s protestations) was such a powerful itch beneath his skin that the computer was duly abandoned for tasks more physical: cleaning his weapons, a task made complex by his current disability.
Clint kept his own schedule, largely; rose early, returned late, spent days sometimes in alcoves of observation decks so removed from the main thoroughfares of the building that those who didn't consult JARVIS (and sometimes those who did) would be forgiven for thinking he wasn't there at all. Though he could be found in the range with predictable regularity.
Steve’s apartment, even high as it was, was not part of his routine nor near any of his preferred haunts -- a particular trip that Clint made, then, his boots (un)surprisingly quiet against the polished floors, his grins for the security staff genuine if brief (building security, always a killer whether cover or day job), his rap against the door businesslike.
It took him a moment to register the sharp sound of the knock as coming from this door. Steve didn’t have to knock, and Stark… well, he owned the place. Moreover, it’d been made very clear that he didn’t want to look at him. So: someone else.
With every single assurance Steve had made about this being a safe place, James reached for the handpiece he’d just put back together (the others left in an organised array within a drawer), tucking it within his belt at the small of his back as he went for the door. Steve wanted him to be civil -- or at least to try -- but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be prepared.
He opened the door and recognition was a brisk thing. What he’d heard from Steve, what he’d seen online; what had happened in Cuba. “Barton.”
“Barnes.”
Whatever the expression or lack thereof on James’ face, Clint’s own calm -- not amusement, not quite, but appreciation of the awkwardness inherent in such meetings coupled with the experience necessary to know that such things were more regular than any operative would prefer. There was frank appraisal beneath that: so this is you, this is where you are, this is what you are.
“Born in a barn?” was a drawl which turned into a cough of resignation -- not great, that one.
“Only if you were bred in a bar,” was equally poor, a beat of not-so-blank eyed study giving way to a slight furrow of his brow and the riposte, which was no drawl, but a flat tone and smilelessness.
Neither friend nor foe, but a skilled marksman; deadly enough. “What do you want?” Come to take out the other arm?
The suggestion of a shrug, nonchalant: “Trailer.”
The weight of his gaze didn’t sharpen, but Clint’s intent was serious enough as he raised the bottles held in his left hand slightly. “Talk. Beer. Take a look at your arm.”
Over the angle of his shoulder, James could see one of the security guards begin his stride down the hall (on the hour, every hour, the regularity of it akin to clockwork).
It was laughable.
His attention, though it had never really left, refocused on Clint. “-- why?” applied to all three of the items on Clint’s agenda.
“Because.” Which was hardly the most eloquent of answers, nor the most forthcoming, but then he had a reputation to maintain of neither. “Gonna let me in?”
And why not? If nothing else, Barton would be a distraction; at worst, a challenge to overcome. So he relented with a, “For now,” stepping back from the door, shoulder sliding away so that it began to swing shut as he turned -- not quite putting Clint behind him, but just enough to step easily back into the room.
Clint’s tolerance for ominous, grandiose and/or psychotic statements being what it was (not that Barnes’ words even honestly passed the threshold of the first category), he was unfazed by the decidedly cool welcome, entering the room with an apparent ease which matched his talk.
“Easy: talk, beer, arm.” The bottles were set down on the nearest surface, condensation bedamned, and Clint raised his brows -- “You want?”
Beer was harmless, his arm couldn’t be more useless than it already was, and talk? Talk certainly wasn’t cheap, but anyone Steve vouched for was worth a first attempt at the very least. The man’s skill was lethal, that much he knew (and how unnnerving it was to have first hand experience of the sort of things he’d only been able to read about).
“Sure.” A glance at the bottles. “You opening?”
Clint answered in action: one bottle was used to open the other with two quick, spare motions (there was a reason he had so closely equated trailer with bar, for all the humour he found in it, and one offered to the other man with an outstreched arm.
Perhaps Steve had already brought beer, perhaps they’d been reliving a long lost youth; well, reliving almost certainly, but as for the rest Clint thought not. Winter Soldier he might have been, but the rawness in Barton’s face the tension in his frame spoke other stories too. War stories, and after-the-war (it was all war though, really, and each war carried along with you with all the others).
“Not Brooklyn, but it does fine.”
“Not Brooklyn,” he repeated, gaze breaking away from its level study of the other man to sweep across the window, a sea of skyscrapers piercing the sky. Brooklyn was a yellowed, fragmented memory, sticky summer days and unforgivingly bitter winter nights, the wind drowned out only by the wheeze of the boy at his side…
“I haven’t been out.” As evidenced, perhaps, by the fact that he was still living in Steve’s clothes. Jeans, t-shirt. Hair a lank mess, arm -- metal -- still, the other pale and restless. It reached for a bottle now.
“Probably for the best.”
Clint had meant Brooklyn craft beer, so beloved of those young folk who would more likely than not be emulating casual Barnes chic in the months to come, but of course this had been James’ city just as it was Steve’s once; each word with multiple meanings, decades folding on top of each other both close and far. Their Brooklyn he would never know.
“Good for them, maybe. Good for you,” a noncommittal noise as he took a swing of his own bottle. “Maybe. Cabin fever’s no fun, not even in a cabin like this.” Especially not. There was keeping the public safe, and then there was driving a man mad; it was clear enough to Clint, though he’d only just begun to assess Barnes, that the situation couldn’t hold for much longer -- probably wasn’t holding up too well now.
A wan semblance of expression gathered in the hollows and angles of his face. “SHIELD and you Avengers can’t have a HYDRA asset on the loose. For the best.” A nod as he looked back at Clint, seemingly fascinated by the golden hue of the beer, the way condensation gathered beneath the fingertips on glass which could readily be used as a weapon.
He lowered his eyes. “Steve’s very patient.”
“No we can’t. But you always going to hole up in this set of rooms?” His grin this time was humourless; there were windows here, he supposed, lots of light, it was better than it might have been (not hard, given that he knew enough for a hundred dossiers of might have beens). “Steve’s the most patient person I’ve ever met. I don’t think you’re that patient, though weigh in if you disagree.”
This man wasn’t read for the world, and the world wasn’t ready for him, but this was unsustainable, actively damaging perhaps. “You want to work on that, we can.”
Is that what this was? Impatience? Bucky had certainly possessed a measure of it, quick to laugh and quick to anger, but all accounts hinted that he was constant when it mattered.
“What did you have in mind?”
Another swig, with a slight frown upon his features. Thoughtful, more than anything else. “When you know what you need, ask. You’ll get enough people telling you what to do.”
When Clint looked across once more, gaze level and steady, his tone was differently coloured. “You know why I did it.”
The problem -- a problem, one of many -- was that James had no idea what he needed. Sustenance and a place to lay low from HYDRA, those were easy enough. But then what?
It was easier, now, to focus on Clint’s latter words. The extraction from Cuba had the dubious honour of being one of his clearer memories, and the moment he felt his arm go dead stood out in stark precision.
“Sure. Tactical decision. For the best.” Realising latently that he’d been gripping his bottle of beer in utter stillness all this while, he lifted it to his lips. A swig, careful.
“Yeah, no, stop that now.” For the best was going to become one of those refrains, he knew it -- the ones which brought with them the threat of dull headaches much like overly bureaucratic paperwork.
“You couldn’t tell.”
Stop that now. His teeth ground together, hand tightening around the glass.
“You mean you couldn’t tell.”
Clint set his bottle down, but only to set his elbow more comfortably against the counter. “No, I mean you couldn’t.”
“I don’t…” A breath. This is not a debrief. “I know what my targets are.”
“You knew Steve, didn’t care about the rest. Not a criticism, Barnes.” And that was an honest statement, for all it was relatively colourless: Clint knew about clarity of focus, about holding on to one thing at a time. “But that’s why.”
The itch thickening in the back of his throat was a half-constructed argument: that was your assessment, your tactical decision. “Okay,” he said instead. The bottle was held flush against his abdomen, a cold, hard slice of pressure. Interesting how some thought the threat of the Soldier was diminished by the deactivation of the metal arm, but not surprising that this man was immune to the illusion.
“You’re Steve’s friend. You and the rest of them. I care about that.”
“Okay.” He didn’t disbelieve it; Steve was an anchor, and what mattered to him would by its very nature bear weight for Barnes, Bucky, James. But Clint’s understanding was twofold, or perhaps better a piece of paper with two names on it -- Natasha’s, and his own.
“You a fan of Google yet?”
A fan? “Sure,” James said, wondering where this was headed. “Useful tool. When that data was declassified--” a neutral way of describing the game-changing data dump, “it came in handy.”
Clint’s should roll was almost unconscious (and yet of course it was: something he chose to do, rather than constraining the urge); there was a quiet click, which he followed with a heavy exhale before raising his bottle again. “I bet. It’s all in there, but they haven’t teased it out yet; bigger fish, shinier too. You might already have it though -- or maybe not, I’m on a tangent at best.”
In the past minute or so, the tension in James’ jaw had become a different sort of tension, pressure building tight behind his eyes. “What, my history or yours? There’s plenty there. Just say it, Barton.”
“That time when Thor’s very-much-adopted-thanks-no-really-he-is little brother took over my mind. Great time, loads of fun.” He’d gauged enough about -- James -- to make it plain at the demand (could see the broader outline of the reaction he had build up, if not its finer details): “I don’t know, not at all, but I know that.”
… yes, he’d read about that (what little there was to read; massive data leaks were a league of their own, but agents of this calibre knew how to keep certain things in the black). Thor, Loki, the alien fuck-off battle of New York.
“Is he out, fully?”
Such easy words; yes, yeah, affirmative. Med and psych clean slate, all gone, have a great day. And then there was JARVIS, who saw all and heard all and presumably stored all too, circuit-neat archives accessible in half a moment. Modern technology with half a soul, and perhaps even more than that. But then there was truth, which Nat knew, which the other Avengers in their varying degrees knew, which he ultimately knew. And which this man, these men, should know:
“Don’t know.”
Why was Clint telling him this; giving him this? James was equal parts suspicious and confused, the Soldier simply did not care -- would not, now; leave him dormant, let him lie -- but Bucky, Bucky would have felt the warm flush of sympathy. Like there was some mutual something within the dissonance.
What was put in remained even after forcible extraction, like stubborn stains in the peripheries of one’s vision. Couldn’t see it, not quite, not when you tried to focus on it; couldn’t shake it.
“Me neither.”
No surprise at this -- what registered upon Clint’s features more than anything else was acknowledgement, nothing more and nothing less (there was sympathy there, coupled with respect, continued appraisal, wariness -- but they sat beneath, weren’t what was needed now by either man).
“You don’t get sure -- well. Don’t think I will.” A cold swallow. “It changes though. And this won’t help, not at all, but I’ll tell you what someone told me and what I told her way before that.”
“It’s not your fault. And not knowing? That’s okay.”
Speaking through the cold sweat gathering in the small of his back, across his brow -- “It’s not okay. The asset -- me, I could go off -- just off.” He wasn’t meant to speak of this, wasn’t allowed to think about such things -- but he was out, far from Control’s reach (or was meant to be), he could speak if he wanted, goddamnit.
“Things snap. We’re more than an arrow and an arm.”
“Yeah, we are. But okay’s not a free pass, James. You could go off, or off; probably will. I could go under again, tomorrow, five years -- spent a week with Nat out Almighty knows where before any of this shit the fan, couldn’t work out who I was, whether he was still in my head, kept doing things not quite right. Maybe he’s still there, maybe I’m just not the same.” A beat, a shrug. “Maybe both.”
“Not to be fucking Eat, Pray, Love but it’s a journey.” The huff of Clint’s exhale was all self-mockery. “One step at a time. You work at it. You trust Steve? Trust him. Find other things to trust, little things, stupid things. That’s a start.”
Bucky’s touchstones were Steve Rogers, the smiles on girls lips when he leaned in to kiss them goodnight, whiskey poured straight. He put his trust in his knife, his gun; Steve. Everything else was tenuous, the tick of a clock marking out seconds, hours, a lifetime he’d never regain.
“I’ll Google that.”
Something a little warmer, a little more exposed -- and then a laugh, with an entirely different kind of sympathy to it. “Enjoy. But Creedence first.”