driftfleet | 001 ✪ video/audio

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001 ✪ video/audio

Who: Jim Barnes
Broadcast: Fleetwide video + audio
Action: Iskaulit.
When: August 20th.

[ The video flicks on to a spacious room, spans it from left to right, then top to bottom. There's a door off to the right side, and the camera follows it to the adjoining room, similarly large. Again, left to right, top to bottom. Both rooms are spic and span, empty, with wooden floors. And then it switches to audio. The voice is brusque, but amiable, with a moderate Brooklyn drawl. ]

Nice place for a gym. There could be a dojo next door, so it's all in one place. I've got a few sandbags to hang up, and some mats we could use. There's a notice outside for schedules — I know a lot of you folks have been offering training. The room's big enough, and there's plenty more like it on this ship.

Anybody else interested?

[ Anyone wandering the Iskaulit or looking for Bucky after the broadcast will find him humming as he puts up the sandbags. He's dressed very simply in the ship's jumpsuit, with no left sleeve. The left arm whirs in tune as he works. ]

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[ It's perhaps, the gentlest, simplest way to say she knows things she feels she shouldn't. truth is: he's stopped caring. The Bucky of the history books feels like another mask he can wear. Some performance to step into. Another man, who doesn't hurt nearly as much, who does these unbelievable things that people ascribe to him. In the end, it's easy to be what people expect. ]

[ It tangles up when she does thoughtful, completely unasked-for things like this. ]

What's the "little more"?

[She stops walking and looks at him directly. There is no other true answer but this:]

People like me.

[And she watches him, she listens, and she waits.]

[ He hums. ]

You folks got a name?

[A flicker of a smile, more pained amusement lightening her face than an actual quirk of her lips.]

Several. [Freak. Spawn of the devil. Demons. 'Mutie.' Threat. But she was in it now, best see it through.] Most common's 'mutant.'

[She watched and waited still, yes, but -- best to see it through.] Ya want the long version or the slightly less long version?

[She wasn't ashamed of who she was - of what she was, sometimes, but not of being a mutant. She was afraid, always, of the reaction of others when she told them. She couldn't help it, especially if they were a person she'd grown to like. Rejection was never pleasant, but it was a feeling she was used to... and it settled things. Really - best to know.]

[ That expression very nearly makes him tell her to stop, that he's seen enough to guess what's coming. ]

Mutant.

[ He rolls the word in his mouth, carefully. ˈmjuʔn̩t. Tongue sticks on the last letter, that has a breath after; a sound of disgust. ]

I can fill in the blanks.

[ Different enough to be hated, feared, and persecuted. The world never changes, even across universes, but he's too tired to be angry, and instead, entertains a deep, stabbing sorrow for her and what life must've been like. ]

Whatever they call you, they're wrong.

[ His tone brooks no argument. ]

[...he never acted quite in the way others did. She didn't expect (or tried not to), but it certainly jarred what was normal. She'd had to explain this several times, and no one said anything like that.

She stared at him for a moment just... trying to put his response someplace that made sense. Her face slowly softened by degrees as she came to the quiet understanding that she would have to let him stand completely on his own. She liked that. A lot. It was... it was just good.

She shook her head slightly. She stance subtly relaxed, becoming more fluid although she didn't really appear to move.]

You're somethin' else, Jim Barnes. Don't worry. I learned a long time ago not ta let anyone else give me a name.

[She tilts her face up to meet his gaze more evenly, the faintest hint of a smile dancing in her expression. She'll accept your assessment because it resonates with, harmonizes with her core, and for a moment she meets your eyes and lets you see that.

The pain is not so raw right now. She has had nearly five years away from her Earth, five years among people with supernatural powers and abilities who also tended to be ridiculously accepting and kind. It was enough to give anyone hope. She wasn't looking forward to going back, to picking up the banner again and trying, living and bleeding and dying for a world that hated and feared her... but she wasn't going to shrink away from it either. There was still hope. She'd seen it. And as far as she was concerned, there wasn't any other way.

She let him see that too, if he could read it in the quiet set of her stance, the light in her gaze, the faint hint of determination in the set of her mouth.]

[ He's wading in the river and feeling the pull of an ocean tide, all the way out here. ]

Ain't nothin' special, [ he says, gruffly. ] just what they always shoulda told ya.

[ And they should have. She and Peggy and Steve and everyone like them, unfairly pushed aside or pushed down. But the world's not predicated on fairness, just the opposite. Rogue's warm towards him but it's greeted with stoicism before he looks away, jaw set in an old, icy anger. The Winter Soldier wasn't born in the trenches; he came into being in the alleyways of Brooklyn, frozen in place until the War swallowed Bucky up and spat him out. It's the anger, that a man nurses, spreads like a parasite across his skin. He wouldn't go to war over this. But he'd walk into Hell to find the people who tear her down. ]

[ (The fact that it's not vengeance she needs, but patience and acceptance, is a lesson he's still trying to learn.) ]

You shouldn't have had to suffer. I'm sorry.

[Again, this wasn't what she expected. He looked away and she tilted her head further, not quite stung but... listening.

He'd been angry when he spoke to her before and she'd missed it. She didn't miss it now.

This was deeper in him than she'd thought, deeper and... old. It wasn't personal, as he said, 'ain't nothin' special.' It actually had very little to do with her, was that it? Well, that... made a certain amount of sense. After all, it was such a unique response, such a certainty in him (not questioning, not looking for information, instant... defense. drawing of a line. not where he stood, so much as... moving to stand in front of her, a shout of defiance against what he heard said against - not just her. who then?) that was really the only thing that made sense.

Stung a bit, but it was a good shake back to reality. She had been wrapped up in her own pain, caught up in it, and grabbed hold of the consistent kindness he offered without paying attention. She should know better.]

Like anyone should have ta suffer. [The sass was old, habitual... but carried that touch of gentleness with it.]

Hey. [She shifted a little to the side, trying to catch his eye.] Look at me.

[ He exhales, explosively, and looks at her. ]

Yeah well, I figure those of us who coulda carried a little more [ a quick glance at his left arm ] should've.

[ But it has nothing to do with that, and everything to do with how anger and guilt mix and make the worst of poisons. ]

[Rogue hadn't been sure exactly what she was going to say when he looked at her, she'd just wanted to draw his attention to her in the present moment and time.

She sure knew now.]

Really? You aren't even there. Ya keep that up [taking on all the the wrongs of all the world - not just all the wrongs of all of his world, but every single he comes across], you're gonna get so weighed down you'll turn into a pancake. [Her lips twitched up.] A flat, lumpy pancake. An' that's no good ta anyone.

[Metaphor aside, she was dead serious, and her expression shifts to reflect it. She watches him closely.]

[ The joke bounces right off him. Scowling, ]

I can manage; I have super-strength.

[ Now he's just being petulant. Because what's this weight compared to failing your best friend when he needed you most? It's as light as air. ]

[Really? Really?

Rogue doesn't even think, she just lets the impulse guide her and reaches out with a gloved hand and pokes him, right in the chest. She doesn't use the super strength she has access to, doesn't even poke him particularly hard, just pokes him.]

So do a lot of people. [Poke. Again, yes, so that's twice in total.] They're still human too.

[She lets her hand drop and fixes him with a serious look.] You go on takin' the responsibility for the whole world, and you're robbin' everyone else of their own choice, their own responsibility. Sure, a lot of times people suck at it. But sometimes they don't. Gotta give them a chance.

[...in which Rogue apparently pulls no punches, because what EVEN, Jim Barnes. She has not lived for 3 years as a mutant and for 5 years as a victim of mad scientists to stand here and watch you take on responsibility for people being both afraid and idiotic in a world that she hasn't explained to you yet.

At least she manages not to add 'Get over yourself.']

[ It's not the pressure that gets him, it's the fact she felt she had to touch him. How does he say, I'm no longer human? He looks at the mirror and feels for a tear in the skin on his cheek and expects to peel it off to see nothing but red underneath, with hollow eyes. He's a hollow man, head full of straw. Stuffed. ]

[ It was Steve's choice to follow him to war, wasn't it? He shouldn't have gone. He should've been a coward he is and stayed behind. ]

Don't.

[ It's the only remotely threatening thing he's said to her, the sole warning she will get. Do not walk here, where there's nothing but the winter. ]

[That leaves Rogue very confused. Don't... call him out on his crap? Because that was never going to happen. Don't... assume that he couldn't have done something when he wasn't even on her planet? Either they were just operating on two very different planes of understanding, or...

Well... she touched him. She already almost wanted to apologize to him for that, he didn't Know, it wasn't fair (except some part of her so strongly insisted that Jim Barnes needed someone to touch him - no, not like that, but in the way touch had been denied Rogue since long before the craving for anything more intimate - touched with casual contact. with friendship. with affection and surety and the simplest sense that someone else is there, and all the power and magic that was the gift of a simple brush of a hand).

But he didn't know. Unless he read it on her somehow. Her gloves, maybe her manner - heck, maybe she had a neon sign flashing above her head that said something like 'WARNING: BIOHAZARD. STAY AWAY.'

Was that it? Was it because she had touched him? And then was it because she had touched him, or because her gut was right about his need? She knew all about the walls required to protect that sort of thing.

She'd clearly made a mistake.

Rogue didn't tense as much as she relaxed into readiness, into listening. It was a certain set of shoulders, twist of hips, alignment of the spine that meant she would be ready, all without moving her feet or changing anything more than her posture.

She was going to try not to assume. She was going to give him a chance. She was going to listen.]

"Don't" what?

[It wasn't a challenge. It was quiet, a request for clarification or explanation. She's going to need to know what he means before she decides about the danger signs. Normally, Rogue bends over backwards to respect another person's personal boundaries, and she is guilt-stricken that she seems to have trespassed in some way... but it would be a way she'd need to know, because she's usually good with those things and she had no idea what he was talking about at all.

(At least, she hoped she didn't. If he Knew, and didn't want her to touch him, then... well, as nice as it would be that someone she told would show some sense, it would mean falling into her most protective mode, certainly, and then if she had anything to say about it they would never be this close again.)]

[ She's trespassed nothing, honestly. Jim likes his privacy, and he's stayed buoyant long enough in a sea of guilt and gunfire that it's second nature to stay there. He doesn't have the right to leave the battlefield anyway. Not when there's the serum in his veins and Steve's legacy to uphold. He has to do the right thing, because it's right, and all that's right these days is the War. ]

[ But the War comes with regret, and pain, and all that venom which nothing washes off. Sam's pushed at those cracks, a little, gentle when he has to be and firm when he doesn't. The ice holds strong. He never wants to talk about it. ]

Don't go there.

[ Touching is okay, because he curls his metal hand in the air over her gloved, hesitantly, willing to reach back if she'll let him. Nothing about her posture is right, she shouldn't be worrying about hurting him. ]

[She honestly has no idea what he's talking about. She doesn't know his past, has tried not to make assumptions. She's put a few things together... but even that doesn't grant insight to depth of what he is expressing.

She knows that she touched him and he told her not to. She knows that she was telling him not to try to take on responsibility for the people in her world who are frequently idiots and morons but who sometimes surprise her with the depth of their compassion and forgiveness and willingness to extend a chance to someone as thoroughly twisted and dangerous as she is.

Her posture doesn't change, but her face shifts, expression reflecting her bewilderment held together at the seems with self-recrimination and loathing.

What had she done wrong this time?

She glances at his hand briefly, and doesn't understand that either.]

I don't understand what just happened here. [Finally, quietly, low notes of frustration with an edge of pain in her voice.] I don't know where I went that ya don't want me ta go.

[Usually, she'd just leave it there -- but he was giving her so little, she tries to work out the options out loud.] If ya can't just tell me that, then I sure can't make you any promises. I was tellin' you the truth as I see it. I can't not do that - I won't not do that. But if you're mad 'cause I touched you, then I'm sorry, an' I won't do that again.

[Her posture does shift, now. It's a simple fluid motion where she doesn't actually step back, but somehow becomes so contained within her space that it appears, feels, as if she's put two steps of distance between them. It is not the sort of thing that could be done casually - that much awareness of space takes practice. And she's had twelve years of it.]

[ His shoulders drop. It's the note of pain that's piercing, the way she contains herself so smoothly and abruptly — she's not somebody he's supposed to hurt. Himself, the enemy, those are acceptable targets. Not people who've been nothing but kind, and Rogue's only wanted the best for him. Which means getting over himself. Easier said than done. Self-pity is easy. After a long time in an inferno he's become inferno. ]

I got hurt, tryin' t'carry it all. You tried to follow me down there.

[ To pull him out. It's what friends do. (He doesn't want to be pulled out.) ]

I'm sorry, sweetheart. Do you think we could [ he presses his mouth into a thin, unhappy line ] put this away and look at it later?

[Rogue's brow furrowed, following what he said, what he did - the drop of his shoulders, the actual admitting of pain...

She thought she understood what he meant, a little. She'd been closer to the truth than she knew, and had gone in with all the tact of a bull in a china shop.

She knew what it was like to walk around with exposed nerves and have others stumble into them... worse when they thought they were doing good.

The enforced sense of space around her didn't really ease, though the set of her shoulders relaxed subtly.

She gave him a small, slow smile.] I reckon I can do that, yeah. Best I can, anyway, [Honestly forces her to modify her answer. She glances away from him and her shoulders take on a determined set.] Wanna keep goin'?

[Looking for that private room, or... anything else, really. This was his chance right to bail if he so desired, and she was giving it to him for free.]

Edited 2015-09-19 07:58 (UTC)

[ One day, when he's not raw and she's not built herself into a castle, he'll ask why it's so bad that she touched him. He figured she doesn't like it, maybe. Some people just don't, but it seems... far deeper with her. Like the very air around her is poisonous, and she's monstrous for existing. ]

[ He... knows a little of what that's like. ]

Yeah, let's keep lookin'. Plenty a'space.

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