tinker tailor winter soldier. (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
redactions) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
driftfleet2015-08-21 04:35 am
redactions) wrote in driftfleet2015-08-21 04:35 am
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. ]
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. ]
[ action ]
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.]
[ action ]
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. ]
[ action ]
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.']
[ action ]
[ 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. ]
[ action ]
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.)]
[ action ]
[ 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. ]
[ action ]
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.]
[ action ]
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?
[ action ]
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.]
[ action ]
[ He... knows a little of what that's like. ]
Yeah, let's keep lookin'. Plenty a'space.