002 ✪ audio + action

[redactions]

Who: Jim Barnes
Broadcast: Fleetwide audio.
Action: On the moon.
When: Sept. 20th.

Good morning. This is Captain James Barnes. By now we've assessed the damage to the ships — seems like it only slowed us down some, and whoever the enemy was they don't seem to have followed us. That's not why I'm here.

[ a half-beat of pause, then, ]

We can't guarantee there'll always be shields or weapons aboard our ships at any given time. That doesn't mean we can't work out a system to make sure we're covering for each other in a fight. If we can form groups of two or three ships, at least one with weapons, and coordinate a few flying formations, we stand a much better chance.

As for communications, if they're taken offline like that again we are going to need a solution. We used manual signalling in my War; I'm open to options that don't have us scrambling blind during a crisis like that.

[ a beat ]

We got lucky, this time. We might not be again.

Barnes out.




→ shooting range

[ You know. This is simple. The pistols take getting used to, but it's a matter of practice. Assembly. Disassembly. Ready, aim, fire. One end of the shooting range is devoted entirely to Jim trying out all the variants he can get his hands on. They are laid on the table in front of him neatly. ]

[ All the shots hit the centre ring of the target, if not, damned closed. He's not concentrating too hard or scowling, just seems perfectly placid, and steady. When he feels eyes on him, ]

Sorry, did you want [ gesturing to the row of pistols ] one a'these?

→ some seedy bar

[ This alcohol is completely algae-free and that might be the entire reason he's even bothering with it. This place doesn't look quite as ripe for sudden violence either; but there's still murmuring in the background and a card game that looks like it might be heating up. ]

[ He's sitting alone, in the corner, nursing a glass. Another one sits beside him, completely untouched. It's always been for Steve. ]

Comments

[mucked]

Fragile!

[ pah. she'd call him anything but: vulnerable, maybe; perhaps tender in his own right. but the men she'd known had never been fragile. certainly not in their egos. ]

Your bluffing remains atrocious, even now. Positively transparent.

[redactions]

Perhaps it's just my way of stringing you along. Getting you to lower your guard. And then, I strike.

[ This is of course belied by his helpless little smile, because coming from her, that's a compliment. Peggy will always know where she stands with him, and who he sees her as. ]

[mucked]

-- I'd like to see you try.

[ to strike! it's a brave sort of challenge, because she can only begin to imagine what changes were wrought in him by whatever process made him what he is. but they weren't talking about battle any longer. hell, they weren't talking about poker. these are the gentle false-flirtatious comments of friends finding old bearings.

and out beyond the firing range's entrance, she turns her collar up against the dust. ]

[redactions]

[ He chuckles, dryly. ]

S'long as you don't think I'm goin' easy on ya.

[ Because it doesn't matter that she's a dame. She's every bit as tough as any other good soldier. ]

[mucked]

Good Lord -- [ mild middle class indignation. ] I'd be offended if I ever thought you were.

[ whatever else they are -- whatever great rift-like differences in their understanding of worlds and history -- there must remain a stiff undercurrent of admiration for each other's raw skill in any field. ]

I'd hope the shield wouldn't change that. [ she hasn't brought it up since he did -- describing how it had been denied to him here. it's a small concession, allowing that she might be getting used to the idea.

piece by piece. ]

[redactions]

[ Small concessions. Small steps, one towards equilibrium and another towards trusting each other as they used to. ]

No, I don't think it did.

[ Perhaps it should have. Steve was good in a way Jim knows he can never be. ]

[mucked]

Then perhaps that's all I need. [ another foot of slack, given freely. to know that however different he is, there is a core of familiarity running through him. he's still the man that won't pull his punches, so to speak. ]

Thank you, James. [ for small assurances. ]

[redactions]

[ It soothes something unhappy in him — as only a sharpshooter could. She doesn't need the old Bucky, and she doesn't expect him to, just the important pieces. The base components she's familiar with. Some of them are still there. ]

Friends call me Jim.

[ He smiles at her, genuine and patchwork. ]

[mucked]

Jim--?

[ the shortened name hooks itself into a question, as though she's doing little more than tasting her way through three brief letters. jim. oh, it causes her nose to crinkle and her head to shake. and for a moment, it almost appears as though she would refuse to tack such a meager name onto a man like james barnes.

but he's different. perhaps a different name is only appropriate. ] Jim, then. I'm happy to be counted amidst friends.

[redactions]

[ People don't think it of her, but she's very lonely where she is. Steve at least had him all those years growing up, but Peggy, as far as Jim knows, had to form herself up, fight to get to the war, and then fight in it. She should have more friends — but like all of them, they're guarded with their hearts. It's not easy to lose the people who're trusted with their lives, day after day. ]

[ He falls into a comfortable silence as they walk, and eventually they come to the shuttle he used to land — he's not in the mood to rent a room. He closes the door after them and gestures for her to sit. ]

So, should I ask you to turn around?

[mucked]

[ jokes prickle on the back of her tongue. playful nods to past immodesty, or perhaps a terse (but mock) reminder that she's not asking him to strip down to his skivvies. but something compels her to be more gentle about the matter -- to not snake her way through the reveal with cheap tactics intended to keep the power firmly in her own grip.

so she sits -- legs crossed; deceptively demure. and she wedges an honest question in his direction: ] Should you?

[ for all she knows, he's shy about the arm. for all she knows, the act of the reveal is sacred to him. she can't judge. not yet. ]

[redactions]

[ It's not sacred as much as deeply personal — perhaps that's what excludes it from the grounds of acceptable mockery. They know their boundaries. ]

No.

[ No, he'd rather face her. Jim pulls off his shirt, and then approaches where she can see the whole thing: gleaming and polished. Dark black spaces between the plates, reptilian in appearance. Where it joins to his shoulder there's angry, red scars, standing out against his skin, like the shoulder plate has clamped its jaws in on him. Painted on is a white star, with a blue circle. It smells of metal polish. ]

[mucked]

[ she knows how to be impassive. or, at least, how to appear it. her face is a blank, with eyes that betray only the most basic curiousity as the full metal piece is revealed. she stops all else from encroaching onto her expression: sympathy; horror; wonderment. all of it suppressed for the moment.

instead, she raises one hand and gestures him nearer. wordlessly, she beckons him to bring him and his hybrid shoulder down to her eye-level. it's an invitation, opposed to the forced reckoning that might happen should she suddenly stand.

what knots her gut most? the welted skin, or the star? can't say; won't say; shouldn't say. ]

[redactions]

[ He comes as close as he can without invading her space, the metal palm facing up, and bends to her eye-level. ]

[mucked]

[ an extended arm is as good as permission -- and peggy places her fingertips against his hard silver palm. she remembers what's been said about the winter soldier, and about how he allows jim to touch the prosthetic. such consideration sparks through her mind when she does much the same, tracing one joint and then another.

a childish thought strikes her: it's like armour. like the lobstered steel suits seen in museums and in dusty academy hallways. her mouth quirks into a wry smile, because she can't imagine anyone daring to call james barnes a bloody knight to his bloody face. but the comparison settles in the back of her mind, and she can't quite shake it.

she looks at the arm. she looks at him. and her head tilts. ]

It's remarkable work. [ softer: ] Can't be denied.

[redactions]

[ The metal is cold to the touch: colder than it has a right to be, an effect of the coolant inside working to keep it that way. It's not frost, but enough for a sting to her hand. ]

[ Evenly, ] It's the single most advanced prosthetic anyone's created.

[ When her hand lifts up far enough, he turns his forearm, to show her how the plates move together to increase the force of a punch. He carries a shield, and it wouldn't be inaccurate to say this half of him is the mace. ]

[mucked]

[ she isn't proud of how quickly she does the (mild, estimated) calculations: this man is one-part weapon. more weaponized than he ever was before, and far more worrying was the implication that the other one -- the winter soldier -- harboured a mission to kill what she loved. the reminder turns her blood as cold as the cooled metal under her fingers. ]

How much power does it house? [ ... ] How does it measure against -- against the serum, for example?

[ against the single most advanced soldier anyone's created... ]

[redactions]

I don't know.

[ Jim shares the same worry: did from the moment he knew what the Winter Soldier's mission was. He flexes his fingers. ]

It's vibranium, or close to it. Nothing's stopping it anytime soon.

[ Any attack they mount on the Winter Soldier should he turn needs to be mental, and not physical. They can't win otherwise. ]

[mucked]

[ and so the battle would be a proper slog, then. uphill and hard. peggy chews her bottom lip and gives her head a sad, sad shake. vibranium, or close to it. what a terrifying thought.

it inspires a bones-deep need for howard, and for his rocket-quick mind to be set upon the problem. with time and space between them (quite literally) she can almost begin to forgive him his trespasses, so long as she otherwise thinks of him with all the ways he might help her.

finally (daringly!) she dances her fingertips across the scarred tissue at jim's shoulder. she clucks her tongue. ] Oh, the things the war did to us. [ a brief rare glimpse of her own scars is betrayed in how sorrowful she sounds. ] But I must say -- I like the star.

[redactions]

[ Grief is one scar. He offers her a faint smile as she brushes her fingers over his physical ones, and then, finally, he sits, and purses his lips. ]

Yeah. About those. [ how to even begin. ] You ever had to sit through fireworks?

[mucked]

I'm not certain sit is the best description of what I do through fireworks -- [ soft and honest. a little too honest, perhaps, and the regret shows on her face in the wake of such a confession. peggy stays firm and outwardly unflappable in the face of such loud celebrations, reminiscent of...other things.

and she hadn't spent the same lengthy time in direct combat as some of the other soldiers. a spy's lucky break, that. she can't imagine how much worse it might be for someone else. ]

Turn into a statue, perhaps. Or freeze like ice. But I don't sit.

[ not through fireworks. ]

[redactions]

[ Fussy and precise as always. The corners of his eyes crinkle. ]

We used to say battle fatigue, but those ain't exactly the right words. It's — called post-traumatic stress. There's medicine for it now, and people you can talk to. Everyone who comes back has it in some degree.

[ What a joke, like they can come back. He sets his jaw. ]

I'm just sayin', you know — [ if you need someone to talk to ]

[mucked]

[ battle fatigue. bloody hell -- she wants to say she doesn't suffer from it, and that it hasn't touched her the way it's touched others. some ugly inner part of her recoils (only for a moment) at the thought of being as hurt and vulnerable as thompson had become at his core. but that reaction is in itself a sort of battle fatigue, and peggy's eyes flutter briefly shut while she reminds herself that all who survived that grind came out of it as some different person. and that it does them all a disservice if she allows a twinge of ego to consider herself better than any of them.

she looks at jim again: ] I know. [ i understand. she can't quite thank him for the unspoken offer, especially considering the circumstances under which it's been given. but she can look him in his eyes and do her best not to falter. ]

[redactions]

[ He expected a battle. None happens, and the relief almost makes it to the surface. ]

All right.

[ That's all he can really ask. ]

Just know you're not alone.

[mucked]

Nor are you, Captain.

[ the rank is given with affection -- and just a sliver of uncertainty. she remembers a moment of near-similar intimacy between herself and mister jarvis: then, he'd been tending to her wounds instead of her now investigating the cracks in jim's armour. but their conversations has taken similar bents...on loneliness, and on the hard truth that none of them had to operate alone if they didn't want to. every lone wolf from that war had a handful of others who felt the same, and they are all better served by banding together. ]