driftfleet | (no subject)

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(no subject)

Who: Cole
Broadcast: No
Action: EVERY SHIP EXCEPT THE MARSIVA
When: The first half of the month

[See, the problem is, now Cole's augment is a pilot one.

He's lost the room he wasn't aware as his, but he's gained a whole new lot of knowledge. Such as how to move the ship, how to dock it to other ships and that makes his constant wandering from ship to ship much easier.

And it means he can park the Pathstone with the Three Twins and Tourist without ever going on board either of them. He can bring the Pathstone to them, and still give Fenris his safe space and people form those ships and visit the Pathstone without having to take a shuttle!

So, Cole's doing his rounds again. Visiting. Parking. Shoving the Pathstone wherever he feels like going.]

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[ Aboard the Heron Bucky's busying himself with checking that the panels and wiring are all in the right places, and fiddling around with the ones he's not sure about. He's not convinced he's the best candidate to patch all of this up, but that's soothed away by the joy of having something repetitive and mechanical to do. He's not consciously listening for anyone aboard the ship or around him. ]

[Cole comes up and sits up on a console, watching in silence for a while.

Finally, he decides to say something. Not to let Bucky know he's there, but because he's curious.]

Falling, falling, cold and darkness... It was like dying. Have you died before as well?

[ To his credit, he doesn't jump right out of his skin, and instead looks at Cole, trying to decide how solid this ghost is and whether he should really be talking to it. ]

Yeah. I drowned. Or — thought I did, anyway.

[Cole nods and swings his legs to drum an erratic beat with his heels.]

I died too. It's not very nice.

He died over and over, every time he was in the coffin was like dying again.

I haven't met anyone else who died.

It's a small club. Y'know, on account we're not really s'posed to be walking around.

[ He looks over Cole more intently. The curve of the bones, fingers. The eyes. ]

What's your name, kid?

[He's not a handsome young man. He's too gaunt, his features not quite fitting together right, his eyes too large to his face and pale, almost luminous blue.]

Compassion. Cole. People call me Cole, so I guess that's my name now.

[ It's not the outside that matters. It's only Steve and Schmidt whose bodies match what's in their hearts, anyway, the rest of them make do. It's the way softness and iron blend in Cole's eyes and his voice that make Bucky think he's much older than he is, or he might've seen war. Cole did say he had died. ]

Do you want to be called Cole?

[ Names are important. He's not Bucky anymore except to Sam, and not even then. James, to Natasha. Cap, to anyone who never looks too closely. ]

Yes. I'm Cole now, it's who I've been for several years. Compassion isn't a people name, it's a spirit name. I died, well, he died, and I was born as him, but not, but Compassion was then and Cole is now.

Who are you now?

[ He thinks it makes sense to him, the way poetry makes sense: it tells him something he already knows but wasn't aware of until reading. ]

I'm not sure. [ a wry smile ] I'm Jim, most of the time.

[Cole stares and then wrinkles his nose.]

You don't feel like Jim. But people names don't make sense like spirit names. They aren't them, encompassing, embracing, eternal.

The other name hurts, because it's screams his absence, his death, his dying over and over but he doesn't ever give up, never did.

[He rubs his hands over his eyes, rocking slightly. When he speaks again, his voice is quieter.]

It's cold.

[ Back home, everyone knows the story. Steve Rogers, born in poverty and forged by war, the perfect beacon becoming the perfect lost hero. It's the nature of people to make myths, and didn't he always know it'd be Steve going down in history? It seemed right, on the surface, that he should've shaped the century. It seems right that even Cole knows this story, because he too, is dead, and something else came back. ]

[ Bucky doesn't answer immediately, or at least, he answers in a series of movements before words even come to mind. The first is the fingers of his left hand, metal made to look flesh by the special sleeve, curling inwards, folding in on itself and crumbling. The panel gets set next to the wall, the wiring is the guts of the ship splayed for whoever looks. His brows furrow, and he blinks, seeing through Cole for a few seconds, before looking at him. ]

It is cold.

[ It's always been that way, since the first winters in Brooklyn. He hasn't been thawed out completely, or at all. ]

Will you tell me, about him? The you that died?

[Cole watches, experiences, feels the slight weight of a too small boy against him, like Bunny tucked in against his side. The pain of a lost arm and his left hand clenches as Bucky's does, sympathetic feeling racing through him.]

Yes.

Cole was a hedge mage. He lived in a cottage, away from the village, with Mama, his father and Bunny. Mama taught us how to hunt, to use a knife to kill quick and clean. 'Kill because you have to to survive, never be cruel about it, Cole. There's enough cruelty in the world.'

[His voice takes a soft, lighter, breathy quality as he quotes Mama.]

Father was always angry. He screamed and there was pain, brilliant bright against a dull world. 'Hide, don't make a noise, he'll find you, be still, be quiet.'

[Mama again, and he was sinking into the memories of that day.]

Bunny keeps crying and wriggling and my hand is over her mouth and she goes quiet, stops crying, he's roaring like a rage demon, and Mama's silent too. The door opens and he drags us out and Mama's knife is there, I can't breathe but I can reach. Make it quick, make it clean.

The world comes alive. It surges and screams and sings and reaches to me and I command it, burn, burn it all, there's nothing here worth having, watch it all burn.

[He almost seems smaller as he speaks, paler and thinner but then he takes a deep breath and pulls himself out of that day.]

Then the Templars came. Do you want to know more?

[ He sits in front of Cole, one leg drawn up to his chest and his arm curled around it loosely. The other leg stretches out, and then folds. It makes him look smaller than he is, and he is smaller, less than the weight of the dead boy in the room. He closes his eyes as he listens: he smells the burning air, the tang of metal, and most of all he listens to the fear. ]

If you can.

[ Some grief is better told than rattling around in the ribcage, sucking up breath where it should've gone to the lungs. Most people carry that kind, and he thinks Cole might have it too, but grief has many forms. ]

[Cole mimics how he sits, hugging his knees to his chest and resting his chin on his kneecaps. He manages to fit all of himself into the shade of his oversized hat.]

Apostate! Murderer! Grab him, get that flame smothered, pain, in my head, in my neck, blackness. It hurts, something over my head, the wood is hard under me, the wagon rocks, moving, it's cold and painful and I feel so sick. The manacles are heavy.

[It's disjointed, because Cole didn't remember it well. The blow to the head had rattled him.]

Days on the road. We can make it nicer, apostate, if you're nicer to us.They'll make you Tranquil, Tranquil don't get to say no, boy. The gruel is thin, but I don't go hungry.

The tower rises like a needle into the sky, reaching to pierce into the heavens. Magic shines and shimmers around it, but we don't go through the gates. We go around the back, they drag the chains, drag him along the ground, down into the cells, down, down, no light but the flickering torches, into a cell, and the door clangs shut.

Alone.

No one ever came back.

His voice trails down into a whisper and then stops.

Then he looks up. He doesn't show any emotion on his face.

I can tell you about his death. If you want.

[ There's a slow terror to the word tranquil that freezes over him like the cold water of the Arctic, pulling him down and making his heart loud in his ears. A rusty dungeon. Men, with swords, likely, smiles full of teeth. Smiles out of nightmares. Zola had one, like that. Him and his soft voice like music. Cole, trapped, and alone. Bucky's killed a lot of boys that young, but he was fast about it. Clean. The world was already hell around them, it didn't need to be dragged out. There is enough cruelty in the world, Cole's mother says. There's enough cruelty in every world. ]

Dying hurts. [ it's unnecessary to say, but he puts it in the air between them anyway ] I want to know, if it was quick.

[Cole looks at Bucky and he sees another place, but no so different, another cell, but he wasn't alone all the time.

He wants to say what will make Bucky happier. He doesn't lie.]

No. He starved to death. They forgot about him. I came to him when he was dying, so he wouldn't be alone.

[ Compassion and then Cole. It's not a sweet story, or even one with much of a moral so far, but most stories are too simple, anyway. He stands, and he comes to sit next to Cole, shoulder-to-shoulder, sharing the space. Feeling the same. Grief in the end isn't like breath but like stone. It's better carried by two than by one alone. ]

He's bright.

[ Light lingers even when it's passed from one's vision, as colours and shapes pressed against one's eyelids. Someone bright like Cole deserved better. ]

You know, there's a tradition we have where I come from: we buy a glass for the dead and don't drink it, so we can remember. You think he'd like it, if I did that?

[There is no moral. It's just a short, hard life that ended with a flickering gutter of light.

Cole looks up, tilting his head to actually look past the brim of his hat at Bucky. He's not used to people wanting to be close to him.]

I think... it would be nice for people to remember him. However they do that. He shouldn't have been forgotten.

[ He's sitting patiently, but alert. Not everyone likes being close to another person, and he's ready to move away at even the most minute sign of discomfort. ]

No, he shouldn't. None of them should've. [ he exhales, soft, and weighed down ] But I guess we only really die when no one remembers us anymore.

[Cole doesn't really get uncomfortable easily. It can be it's own problem.]

Hm. No. They die. In this world. They exist in the Fade still. The spirits remember.

But you're not dead. And neither is he. You're both just changed.

[ Changed — not Bucky anymore. Barely even a James. Someone. And the same for Steve. He purses his lips.]

You're being kind. [ he finds this amusing, to a degree, and his mouth quirks up at the side ] Bucky's been dead a long time.

[ never shall it be said he sometimes doesn't share Steve's flair for the dramatic. ]

No.

[Cole reached over to point at Bucky's chest.]

Bucky's there. With Stevie.

[ His fingers curl in mid-air, not sure whether he wants to keep Cole's hand there or push it away. ]

Locked away.

[ Which is not that different from dead, to him. ]

Like a precious jewel in a safe. They're safe in there. You locked them in there so they'd survive.

[ So he'd survive the maw of Captain America. There's newsreels, academic papers, quotes attributed to Steve he never said, things he never did, all because it's a good story. The perfect story. And it's nowhere near the truth, or the truth has become so muddled that nobody knows where to look for it and wouldn't know if they found it. ]

Yeah. It's all that's left.