driftfleet | 02. | All lies and jests; still a man hears what he wants to hear

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02. | All lies and jests; still a man hears what he wants to hear

Who: (Winter Soldier) Bucky Barnes (

sinistral)
Broadcast: No
Action: Yes; SS Starduck, SS Iskaulit, B'lire
When: From the start of the post-calibrations drift to visiting the new planet

SS STARDUCK
→ Reacclimation;

The time spent aboard the Marsiva had been uncomfortable, to put it politely. Bucky still doesn't believe it, not really, when they're returned to their own ships; it comes with staying awake for the first twenty-four hours just to make sure this isn't a dream or a trick of the mind. Considering the state of his mind, he's not entirely convinced, but it does seem a little bit elaborate to just be a part of the Calibrations.

And if this is truly the ship, if they are truly back to what passes for daily life around here, then it has to start with checking over everything. Maybe he's taking the whole idea of Security a bit too literally but now that he's had some time to think about it, he can only conclude that his presence and assignment here is due only to what he is. What HYDRA turned him into has made him valuable; if he performs his role well, perhaps the switch inside his brain won't be flipped. So for that reason he's combing all of the ships nooks and crannies, looking for anything that might be out of order or out of (what passes for) the ordinary. He won't enter a crewmate's quarters without being asked to do so though; he sees it as too much an invasion of privacy.

When he's finally satisfied and no longer has that activity to occupy his mind, Bucky heads to the workout area in the cargo bay. He doesn't know which former crewmembers had seen to the upgrades of the equipment there, but he's thankful to be able to take advantage of it once more. And, judging by the force behind his punches, to do his best to attempt to break it. There's a lot of frustration to work out, enough so that it's definitely palpable. Call him out on it? Try to keep up? Pity the amount of protein solid he's going to have to consume to compensate for all those burned calories?

SS ISKAULIT
→ Work It Out;

Bucky really only has one goal in mind in coming to the Iskaulit: to push himself in a way he can't with the limited facilities on the Starduck, to force the body into exhaustion since the brain won't accept any other sort of quiet. That it's not the healthiest pursuit doesn't matter. As long as it works, it's fine. And he'll make it work.

He tries to choose odd hours if possible, hours that coincide with the times he'd expect most people to be sleeping and the facility to be empty. It doesn't always work in his favor but as long as there's a heavy bag or a speedbag available he stays, alternating time spent against the bag with weights. And if the facility appears too busy for his liking, he simply leaves with the intention of returning later.

→ Art Appreciation;

Though most of his time spent aboard the Iskaulit is spent in the gym, it's not the only reason Bucky visits. He hardly appreciates heavy-handed attempts at steering his actions but whether it had been the Vision, or the Atroma acting through the Vision, the scene he'd been shown of the mural aboard the Iskaulit has not faded from his memory. That in and of itself is significant enough for him to seek out the mural he'd been shown, to find its location and maybe figure out why it's so important.

Seeing it doesn't bring him any answers.

It's a nice enough work of art he supposes; he's not one for appreciation of the arts, and he's got no skill in them himself. He can draw a rough map though, so the next time he visits, he brings along a journal and starts copying down that section of the wall he was shown aboard the Marsiva, mapping it out in rough lines on the paper. It's not a good drawing, more a diagram than anything else, but it's good enough for his purposes, good enough for him to write down his thoughts (questions, mostly) on the next few pages. And it's a good enough place to sit quietly, back against the wall because even here, in a place that's supposed to be peaceful, he's defensive and closed off more than anything else.

PLANETSIDE
→ Hunting;

It's more than a literal breath of fresh air to get off the ships and onto solid ground again. It's not that Bucky doesn't do well with being cooped up; it's more that the close quarters with others — even his shipmates — and the happenings on board the Marsiva have him feeling like a caged animal. And like a caged animal, his first instinct is to lash out; fortunately, the punching bags have held up against such expulsion of energy. So far, anyway.

Fortunately, this system's planet seems well suited to his kind of stress relief.

He's a regular in the wooded areas both for the exercise of hiking and the action of hunting. Ghosts or supernatural beings or whatever, he'll keep an eye out for them just fine, but it's the more substantial creatures that he makes his prey. People are willing to pay both for pelts and for the meat from carcasses; it seems a good use of his time.

→ Shopping;

Man certainly can't stay in the woods all the time and while Bucky's no stranger to wilderness survival, it'd be foolish not to take advantage of the offerings available via trade. And not all goods are physical; there's certainly something to be said for the pursuit of information, even though little enough of it seems to pertain to anything outside of this world's particular customs. Still he asks, here and there, unsatisfied by the answers but unwilling to stop trying.

He's examining wares at a particular establishment, carefully testing the weight and balance of a hunting knife while keeping half his attention on the conversations of the building's other occupants. It's when he overhears stories of a metallic man that he decides to take his leave; local legend or not, it definitely sounds like something he'd rather avoid being tangled up in and he's glad to have kept the habit of wearing long sleeves and gloves when going planetside. It's just easier to avoid the questions that he doesn't want to answer.

WILDCARD
→ Elsewhere;

Did we discuss something and I forgot? Have another idea? I'm open to almost anything, hit me up via PM or at

sometimesamuse and we'll figure out out. I do write starters in prose but if you prefer brackets I'm happy to match.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"It is the best option for me." He's thought this through at least; he most certainly doesn't trust himself, and keeping himself apart from others is safest for everyone and everything. He can blend in fairly well; he's pretty sure he can manage to stay an anonymous drifter, moving from place to place and keeping from putting down any sort of roots for too long a time. "It's the best option for everyone."

He pushes away the thought that there are those who would disagree. They don't truly know what he can do, how he can be used.

"It's up to you." The Vision is obviously familiar with his skill set; he would know what Bucky is capable of doing. "I would give you my help in whatever capacity, but I also respect keeping suppositions and theories to a small group. Information gets diluted the further it's spread, and an additional person is an additional potential point of failure."

"I hope it need not always be that way," he says quietly. Because he has seen what the Winter Soldier is capable of: there was the mess in Germany, there were all the years of records, there were Natasha's own personal accounts...and there was the time Winter lost it on the Iskaulit and attacked a dozen people, and only the fact that none of them had been baseline humans had kept them alive.

But he'd also seen how Winter had improved, until by the end he was someone that not only the Vision could trust implicitly, but that he was proud to call a friend. It had taken a long time, but the kernel was there. He hopes this Winter Soldier has the same potential.

He nods. "There are some I would trust with the information easily enough. Kitty Pryde, who has been in a situation much like this one before. Vash the Stampede, who has been in the Fleet since the beginning of the Cycle. Wanda Maximoff, whom I trust with everything I am, each and every day." And he looks at Bucky appraisingly. "And Natasha Romanoff, a professional spy. It would be in the same capacity as her, if I were to share information with you. She is too much in the habit of keeping information to herself to be easily swayed by, oh, a friendly stranger at a bar, for example."

He shrugs, but doesn’t really reply to that. Maybe he’s right in that he’s better off alone. Maybe the Vision is right in that he’s not. The only way to find out is to try living his life and making his own decisions, which is what he’s trying to do. The Fleet (and more specifically its members) don’t exactly make it easy.

“I suppose it never hurts to be on good terms with an assassin.” He’s unapologetic about it because it’s the simple truth of what he is. “If you know what HYDRA made me, you know I can be triggered. And if the Atroma trigger me, they can make me tell them anything I know. I could be more liability than asset to you.” In his mind it’s only fair to warn of the possibility.

"I've seen the results of that trigger." No need to elaborate there. He hadn't been present for Germany, technically, but it had been well documented. And the Iskaulit with Winter...that had been rough. Nobody had died, but there had been bad injuries and many close calls.

"But I cannot let that possibility guide my actions with regards to information. They could override our augments at any time - I've heard of it forcing people to tell the truth, for example." Hell, he doesn't know if any communication is really secure from them. But that doesn't stop him from trying.

"Then you know." They don't need to elaborate from there at all, which is good. Bucky doesn't exactly enjoy talking about it, even though he's pretty sure those skills are why the Atroma have brought him here in the first place.

What's strange, to him at least, is that even knowing that risk, the Vision would still consider him worthy of this little project. "Then I guess my answer is yes. I'll join your information pool, if you'll have me."

"I know." The funny thing is, while Bucky may be used to people wanting him only because of what he can do--those skills are almost never in use here. Combat is rare, political upheaval is rare (although not unknown; he recalls one time when they'd helped start terraforming machines to work again and set a worldwide change in motion). And the only target most passengers are interested in spying on is the Atroma themselves.

He nods, even smiling a little bit. "Gladly. There's a hard copy of a document on the Iskaulit with the information we've compiled so far, and I can send a secure transmission to you of the information Connor and I discovered on board the Marsiva during the Calobrations." There's more, but some of it--the part about the creature--he doesn't trust to any mode of communication that isn't telepathy, and he is not going to ask Bucky if he wants someone inside his brain, even when the someone is Wanda. There are some questions he just already knows the answer is going to be negative, so he doesn't want to ask.

He knows, and still — still! — he'd choose to associate with Bucky. He won't pretend to understand it because he's certain that he's missing something important. And he's not sure if he likes how it makes something twist up a little inside him. This will take a lot of personal examination, and that's something that he's certainly not going to do in the presence of the other man.

Or of pretty much anyone, really.

"I guess I know what I'll be reading on our next Drift." It's as good a use of his time as any, though the presence of the document on the Iskaulit is a little worrying to him. If the Atroma can spy on their daily lives and even their network transmissions, then how secure is anything printed and kept in what amounts to a public space? "You speak of encrypted transmissions but what protection does the hard copy have? At least a cipher, I'd hope?"

Figuring out feelings is hard, okay? He gets that much, at least. Maybe he feels a kinship with someone else who's trying to learn to be a person.

Though at the question he snorts. "None. Though if any of the Atroma or their agents have physical bodies, they have yet to reveal them to us in person."

Feelings are the worst and Bucky wants no part of them, honestly.

"Yet they have ways of recording our every movement. Could they not read over a shoulder?" Perhaps Bucky's being far too suspicious, but he sees it as a vulnerability and his training is in creating — and taking advantage of — vulnerabilities.

"Most likely, I expect. Though I will say I was not here when this particular document was created, so I cannot say whether that was a consideration or not." He seems to be talking about it as more of an academic concern than one of privacy, though. "I simply act as though they have access to all our communications."

"I don't know that I'm comfortable with that thought." He is privately glad that he's started using a cipher in the journal he keeps, just in case. With no clear directive of what the Atroma can observe and what they can't, he's not sure at all that he trusts anything at all. They likely can't be everywhere at once and certainly there are many people in the Fleet for them to observe, but still. "It seems a sloppy lack of caution."

"There's a great deal not to be comfortable with." Goodness knows he's not happy about any of it, and he'll change it if he gets the chance. And...honestly it's good to have someone paranoid around in this case. Just because there are good things about the Fleet doesn't mean he wants to forget that they're prisoners here, taken without consent.

He nods. "Frankly, it is. If I ever need to send you a piece of written information, or if I wish to use an encryption based on something other than the standard ones provided by a Communications officer?" He smiles lightly. "There's a publicly available text of the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I'll use a rotating hex encryption based on the text in chapter 5."

"I suppose this is just one in a very long list." Though perhaps it's one of the few times that Bucky's paranoia is actually useful. It makes him wonder if time in the Fleet will diminish that at all; the thought of becoming so comfortable is actually rather uncomfortable.

"I'll move that one to the top of my reading list." He doesn't have a reading list, but there's clearly no time like the present to start. So what if that list will include a single chapter of a single book? Best to start there, and decide after if the rest of the book is worth the time he'd invest. But he does shrug and let something a little like a tease bleed into his voice. "I'll go easy on you and limit it to one language, rather than an amalgam of half a dozen."

"Long enough." He thinks--of course--about the argument he'd had with Remy, about how just because there were things to like about this place didn't mean they should become complacent, and it's weirdly comforting to know he can count on Bucky for another point of view. Maybe one a little more paranoid than strictly necessary, but then again, maybe not.

"For the record, I do not dream of electric sheep, though it's an appropriate question to ask in the context of the narrative. I appreciate the language consideration; translation software is not quite there yet, and I do only have the one native spoken language." Programming languages don't count, right?

He doesn't know if he'd describe their apparent agreement about this place as good. But the understanding helps at least, the knowledge that — in regard to this one small thing — his paranoia is not a sign of craziness.

Not yet, anyway.

"I figure it's none of my business what constitutes your dreams." The invasive nature of their time on the Marsiva had been uncomfortable enough. "There are worse things to dream. Unless you've ovinophobia, I suppose." Or unless the Atroma have some way of inflicting such upon a person, but it doesn't seem necessary to mention such.

"If you decide you need a translator, I can probably serve. At least for a fair number of Earth languages." He doesn't know why he's offering, but he doesn't take back the words once they're spoken.

"From what Wanda tells me, my dreams are not quite like those produced by a human brain in the first place." Just like he has rest cycles that aren't really sleep, his brain dumbs his daily buffer in a way that isn't really a dream. And he could go a lot longer than a human could without doing either of those things, if he needed to.

He doesn't mention what they're about, though.

"I would appreciate that, actually, should the situation ever arise." He pauses. "Thank you."

"Consider yourself lucky then." Which is all Bucky truly wants to say about that; his own dreams tend toward what could be termed nightmare but even if that weren't the case, it still seems too personal to share. Perhaps it's a reaction to Calibrations or perhaps it's another facet of that paranoia rearing its head, but no discussion is the most acceptable kind of discussion in his mind.

"You know where to find me," he says simply; it could be an offer, if one squints and looks at it sideways. It's as close to one as he's likely to give anyone, anyway.

"I know how to get a message to you, at least," he acknowledges. Where he is at any given time is another matter entirely.

"I suppose I should get back to hunting the Horned Hoppers, hm? Thank you for the distraction earlier."

"Touché." Though the where becomes slightly more limited when they're Drifting, Bucky is still adept at not being found if he doesn't want to be found. At least the Vision seems to know that Bucky would answer said message, should it be sent.

"You're welcome." A beat, and a small consideration of the ridiculousness of this place. "If you actually do see one, take a picture for me?"

"Of course. What is a discovery without documentation?" Not scientifically provable, that's what it is. he smiles lightly and waves, melting back into the populace to go investigate some more.

Near the end of their time at the planet, Bucky does indeed receive an image file of a Horned Hopper silhouetted against the evening sky. It fled as soon as I approached, reads the accompanying text file, but I believe I did see one at the end.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

02. | All lies and jests; still a man hears what he wants to hear

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