revivalproject | IT’S A CONDITION OF YOUR PARDON.

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IT’S A CONDITION OF YOUR PARDON.

WHO: Bucky Barnes, OTA
WHERE: Calibrations
WHAT: Calibrations
WHEN: Calibrations
WARNINGS: All of them, PTSD, Graphic violence, torture, amputation, brain washing, gaslighting

The wall opposite the one you walk in through is trees. Birch trees. Wallpaper, maybe a large painting…it doesn’t really matter. It’s peaceful. Through vertical blinds you can see glimpses of the city outside, warm light streaming through.

It’s an office room, cozied up a little with these touches, but still formal in the way all these spaces are. This is a room where secrets are spilled and notes are taken, until the hour ticks away and you’re released back into the world outside. Which makes it an appropriate enough space for this.

There’s a white couch against the wall, and Bucky sit’s there stiffly, gloved hands folded in his lap. In front of his is a black leather chair waiting empty, a notebook perched on the arm of it.

If you care to take a seat and flip through the book you’ll see a few notes to help prompt you.

Rule 1.
Rule 2.
Rule 3.

Of course, you could pose your own questions if there’s something else you’re interested in knowing. Or, if you’re not so interested in playing the roll of doctor as you are in investigating, you might find a different book, red with a star on it, hidden away in a filing cabinet. There are some strange words written inside.

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Steve is almost relieved as he walks through the door. Ever since he'd seen that stupid hallucination of Bucky asking for his help, he's wondered if he is okay. But here he is. Sitting on the couch hale and....well. He doesn't actually look all that great, but at least he's here and in one piece.

"Buck!" Steve goes forward before remembering that this place isn't actually a room. It's Bucky's mind and the person in front of him is part of that. He pauses and looks around, confused. The empty chair is a pretty big hint about what he's meant to do. He sits in it gingerly and picks up the notebook.

"Buck...where is this?"

This place was clean, with a kind of corporate impartiality that Tony was comfortable with, serene without too much humanity cluttering the visible surfaces. As though he hadn't seen Bucky at all, Tony glanced around, working his jaw and taking slow, rocking steps, like he was assessing the real estate value of the space. When he did acknowledge the room's occupant, it was a muttered, "You should have warned me, I feel under-dressed." It was the kind of place that could leave him feeling severely underarmored without a suit (tailored, not forged) and maybe an important phone called scheduled to take him away quickly, and Tony was going to have to put on a confident show before Bucky realized just how serious he was.

He came to a stop next to the chair, one hand alighting carefully on the back of it, and his calculating stare settled on Bucky finally. It was a narrow, cold scrutiny, with the hint of a smirk at the corner of his mouth that dared Bucky to stare back as long as he thought he could handle it. "James," he greeted, still watching him closely, looking for any revealing twitch to follow. "You keep your secrets very orderly."

Looking up at his name, Bucky's stiff posture softens at the sight of Steve, and he offers a lopsided smirk with a nod towards the window.

"S'Brooklynn, can't you tell," he teases, obviously stalling. He sighs and corrects- "...It's a doctor's office. Someone I gotta see to talk about...everything."

"You could always go change," Bucky countered in a low voice, watching Tony while trying to look like he wasn't.

His lips twitched into a smirk at the use of his first name, reminded of the doc in this setting, and he shrugged a shoulder, looking around. He very pointed turned his attention back to the chair. That was where he was supposed to go. Nothing else to see...

"Stark. You can thank the Doc. I have nothing to do with it."

They'd just started talking about this and Steve isn't comfortable just diving into Bucky's mind without his full consent. But then again, he's not sure what else he can do here. Just sit and stare at him?

Who would do something weird like that?

He looks at the notebook and takes a deep inhale.

"Are... Is it these rules you're talking about? What's Rule 1?"

Bucky frowns and looks at his hands.

"...Nothing illegal," he recites. Behind him the trees are replaced with various jumping memories.

Bucky as a young teen stealing medicine Steve needs.
Bucky with longer hair- grabbing a running motorcycle and toppling the rider to steal it and escape his pursuers.
Bucky placing a tracker on a car.
Bucky asking Sam if he could explain a hypothetical...

They're jumbled and quick, jumping from one to the next without warning and reason, like Bucky is thinking back over various instances but trying not to land on any one in particular.

The memories flash quickly but Steve is hypnotized by them. The medicine... Steve had always thought Bucky stole it. It is different to see it, though. And then all the other things. The long hair and the strange man... The guilt on Bucky's face that Steve knows all too well, no matter how much he tries to hide it.

He blinks, surprised and not all at the same time. He offers Bucky a gentle smile.

"Having trouble with that rule?"

He breaths a soft laugh through his nose, and again, relaxes a little. This is Steve after all...

"Always have," he allows with a grin. It breaks off after a moment, and he glances away.

"...you really want to know these things?"

Steve leans forward in the chair, keeping eye contact the whole time. He wants Bucky to know this is serious. The most serious he's been in a long time.

"I already told ya, Buck. You can't tell me anything that's gonna change what I think of you. I know you. Future, past, upsidedown. Whatever. I know you. And yeah, I wanna know what happened.

"I wanna know everything."

There's a half dozen decades or more that Steve doesn't know, and Bucky doubts he'll feel the same after he sees, but nods.

"...I'll show you anything you want to see," he agrees.

Steve has never felt so powerful and powerless at the same time. He doesn't want to force this out of Bucky but at the same time this is the best opportunity he'll have to show he isn't just hot air about what he said.

Steve inhales deep and holds it as he thinks. Finally, he gets out:

"Show me why you were being chased. The motorcycle... What was happening?"

That quick look around didn't seem to linger anywhere in particular until it was intent on the chair, making Tony slowly scrape his lip between his teeth with a flicker of irritation. If that was where Bucky wanted him to go, it probably wasn't all that interesting. "No doc here," Tony pointed out, glancing away like he might be searching for one, "so must be a little bit of you."

There was no way someone's darkest recesses were filed away in an orderly fashion in one of these dream-spaces, but there wasn't too much else taking up room in the office. Sauntering in a watchful arc, like a cat stalking his sensible office furniture prey, Tony continued, "Unless that's what you meant--I could throw on a lab coat, you could pull your pants down. I have very gentle hands."

Bucky sighs faintly, lips pressing together in a line and he wets them.

The image first flickers to life on news footage of the UN attack, Bucky's voice explaining the context, as the far war seems to envelop them back into the memory of that day in Bucharest.

There's Bucky. Long hair and a haunted look about him, but he manages to smile a little as he barters for fruit, speaking Romanian as easily as if it was his first language.

Once he's finished he frowns, and for a moment Steve might think it's because he's been spotted, but Buck walks right past him, up to the news stand where The Winter Soldier is front page news.

"I didn't do it," the other version of Bucky promises, as they follow him back to his apartment. "I've done a lot of things. Worse things. But I didn't do this."

Steve watches quietly. The attack is hard to see but more than that is the brutal way Bucky looks. Even now, so different from the one he knew, he is healthier and happier than the man alone on the street and watching his own back.

Steve looks at the Bucky beside him and feels his heart break.

"How long were you on your own? I don't know that I've ever seen you look so..." He doesn't have words for it and just shakes his head.

"Didn't you have anyone with you?"

"I'm not...sure," Bucky admits, "My memory wasn't...um...it was a work in progress," he explains. Of course Steve doesn't know the full extent.

He shakes his head though.

"No," he answers shortly, and the memory skips ahead around them.

Bucky silently enters the apartment. It's run down and sparsely furnished. One room, a mattress on the floor, windows covered in newspapers. Notebooks liter every space available, and Captain America is leafing through out of them. Bucky stares at his back until the man turns around.

"...Do you know me?" Cap asks.
There's a long stretch of silence before Bucky answers, "...you're Steve. I read about you in a museum."

Steve's breath catches in his throat. It's the first time he's able to see what the serum is going to do to him. He's tall and strong and dressed up in stars and stripes like a real superhero. It's overwhelming enough just that. But then he hears what the two are saying and he feels lightheaded.

"You..." His voice is cracked with emotion he can't hide. "You... Didn't know me?"

Steve turns to the Bucky outside of the memory, grieved. "God. What happened to you?"

It makes Bucky look guilty. He hates that there was ever a time his memories of Steve were locked away from him. Especially when those faces, all the people he's killed over the years, not one of them ever left him. How was that fair?

The memory glitches briefly, images of the Chair, and muffled screams pierce the air before they're back in that apartment, Bucky blinking at the floor.

"I wasn't in Vienna. I don't do that any more," the memory Bucky was saying, voice devoid of spirit.

"Well the people who think you did are coming here now. And they're not planning on taking you alive," Cap warns, looking anxious.

"That's smart. Good strategy." Bucky seems unsurprised. Like he's been waiting for this or something like this. Never really living. Footsteps echo overhead, and Bucky shifts like a caged animal, ready to fight.

That second of screams makes Steve's whole body go ice cold. He's never heard Bucky sound like that. He had no idea he even could experience the amount of pain necessary to elicit those cries. Steve steps toward Bucky, wanting to touch him. To do anything. But the memory plays on and Steve has to watch.

Part of him doesn't recognize the man talking to Bucky. How can he be so calm when all of this is going on? Bucky is a wolf pacing, contemplating fight or flight. Steve doesn't know how this is going to go but if Steve lets them take Bucky, he's pretty sure he'll be physically ill.

Nothing about this is right. Nothing. But he keeps watching, silent.

"This doesn't have to end in a fight, Buck," Cap says, but it's clear Bucky's all ready mentally preparing.

"...It always ends in a fight," he says wearily. He sounds tired of fighting. Bucky takes of his glove to prepare, the hand beneath a shining silver in contrast to the black Steve's familiar with.

"You pulled me from the river. Why?" Cap demands urgently.

Bucky twists a face.
"...I don't know," he lies.

"Yes you do."

Their stare down is interrupted as a smoke grenade is thrown through the window and Cap knocks it back the way it came with his shield.

"I dunno what I was expecting but this probably wasn't it," the Hunter says by way of greeting as he looks around, eyeing the furniture and the tree motif in the critical way one would an art piece at a gallery.

He looks over at Bucky and then the empty chair before making a beeline for it. It looks cushy and expensive, of course he's gonna plant his metal butt in it.

Steve is sick watching this. He hates the way Bucky sounds. He hates the way he sounds. And most of all he hates that this is their future and also Bucky's past. Steve can feel the grief both of them had to have been feeling here. The useless anger and pain. How could things get to this point?

The fight goes on and Steve watches himself protect Bucky as best he can. It's not enough and both of them are fighting so naturally. It is breathtaking and haunting at the same time.

"Buck," his future self shouts, "stop! You're gonna kill someone!"

And the memory's Bucky pins him to the floor and punches through the boards by his head.

"I'm not gonna kill anyone."

Out comes the backpack and out goes Bucky. Steve can assume what follows and looks away.

"That's enough..."

The scene abruptly ends, returning them to the safety and calm of the therapist's office.

Bucky shifts on the couch, and glances back to the wall, now back to the forest of birch trees.

"I could show you happier things. We could just talk," he offers, seeing how this is affecting his friend when they've only scratch the surface of how dark things could get. They could just wait out the time. Steve didn't have to live through all this with him...

Steve shakes his head vehemently. He's never called uncle before and he won't now. Not when it's so important for him to know.

"No. No, I'm fine. It's just...it was just surprising to... To see you hurting like that."

He remembers the scream and goes paler while also bracing himself.

"The...that chair thing. What was that?"

Fair enough. Bucky glanced around with an almost shy look breaking through. It wasn't what he expected either. But he guessed he felt...safe here. Able to share things in way he couldn't outside of this room.

He breathed out a faint laugh through his nose. "You sound like Howard," he teased, and then an apologetic smile, knowing no one liked to be compared to their parents, least of all Stark.

"Me neither," Bucky offers with a shrug, surprised by his brain's choices, but then he's never had a very firm grasp on it since everything that's happened.

Nothing happens at least when Cayde sits. Bucky's mind may have constructed a calm room, but it's secrets wouldn't reveal themselves without being asked.

"Comfy?"

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IT’S A CONDITION OF YOUR PARDON.

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