[He's doing his best not to appear confrontational. He's got the matter sorted now and it's not like he's been around Izzekiel much to give him the chance to tell him these things, but it's still wary.]
John told you. But he couldn't tell you to motherfucking warn me or--
[No. He's getting frustrated. He doesn't need to be doing this. He breathes deep, focuses on Mituna, whom he can still feel.]
...Whatever. It's fine. [It's not. He hates it.] Just wanted to make sure you ain't wasn't dead. Only reason I can't feel someone's soul is usually being because they kicked the shit. I can't feel the dead. So, good you ain't that then. Hope it helps you.
[Bucky, at least, doesn't look like he's got plans to kill him yet. He's one of the few in the meadous what could handle a Bucky set on loose. Doesn't mean he wants to.
Still, if Bucky's willing to make on reason now, learning how much he knows might not immediately mean calamity.]
Whatever I tell, up in that hive of yours, that's between you, yo. No one's knowing what gets on said, on what things is in your nug, unless you got telling them. And I ain't going asking or making to help unless you want at me to. [Unlikely.] It's how I do by all, but them what's already on the ins deep with me. Goes easier on by everybody if I just act like I ain't know shit.
[Rather than looking grateful about that, Bucky's expression is hard and cold when he looks at Izzekiel. He's not going to yell at him, he already decided he'd try and be calm about this, but he can't deny he's angry about that.]
You knew me before, you said, in the other place. And even if you didn't, the first thing you saw in me should have told you how little I would want anyone in my head. You should have come and told me right away so I could block you out, you didn't, that's not right.
[He answers calm but clear. He's not going to be scolded on this.]
If I didn't want no one to look at me, would it be fair of me to ask them to blind their eyes? Not to chance the possibility of touch, so bind the hands? You can tell me it's different, but it ain't. This is a sense like any other to me. It's part of me and always has been, perfectly natural.
I'm not going to cut myself up like that. Not more than what I do and what I let already. [Like this.] You don't tell everyone what you can do neither. Most motherfuckers don't and having the ability to do something and acting on it is different things.
Besides, you asked me to treat you as a stranger. Claimed difference. What I knew of him then ain't relevant no more, by your own choosing.
[It is different, but he can't find the ways to express why, so he just frowns down at the path as they walk together.]
Okay, let's say I believe that. That there's a difference between being able to do something and acting on it, that means that when I ask what you know, the answer will be nothing... right? Because you haven't acted on going in my dreams or whatever the hell it is you can do.
[The line of his mouth turns down. He wants to explain this with all delicacy possible, he's just not sure it's going to be enough. Normaly, he could feel every reason why it won't be. The lack doesn't help now.]
...The things what I can do, it ain't just stop at sensing. That's where at it starts. Those things, that's what I can choose or not. Entering your mind at all, I can choose that.
But. [Because of course there is one.] I feel what fear you feel. When you sleep, your dreams bleed on into my own soul subconscious. I can't stop that from happening personal. The only consolation I got for you is that I feel all everyone else too. I can't focus on one person singular so intently all the time. I make practice so I'm knowing what I feel is me and it's me what I keep at. Like background noise to a conversation had. I can't turn it all away, but I can try to turn my focusings else-ways. [Try, being key. Screams are a hell of a background noise when he's got nothing better to pay mind to.]
And that's when you should have told me-- told everyone, so they had a chance to take measures and block you out if they wanted to.
[He shakes his head, trying to keep his calm in this despite how many of his buttons are being pushed.]
I don't care if it's just a sense, it's an invasive one. If I could see through clothes, even if I couldn't help it, it would be right to tell people so they could stop me seeing them naked if they weren't comfortable with it. Maybe it's a sense, but it's one that invades on others.
[His teeth grind. He's starting to lose calm himself.]
That ain't make what I said less true. To cut it away means to cut at me. I do what I can to make sure everyone can feel as safe around me as possible. What that means is not telling people. You think I ain't know what would happen if everyone knew? You think they wouldn't sit me down and chop my digits bit by motherfucking bit, out of their own fear of me? You think that ain't a violation? You think this doesn't feel like a manner of controlling, like I don't understand what that feels like?
[He forces himself to take a breath, brings his hands to release.]
I am allowing you this, and John, because I know what it motherfucking means to you both. But you have no idea what it's like or what it really means for me so don't try and motherfucking schoolfeed me morality like you up and do. Especially when I've already been doing what I can to meet half motherfucking way.
[He's right, Bucky doesn't know what it means to him or how much of a violation it feels like to have those consciousnesses cut away from his awareness. It does chasten him a bit, but not a lot. This is still an ability to see inside people's heads, that's still different from just sight or hearing or anything else harmless.]
I'm sorry.
[He shrugs, tight and disturbed.]
I don't want you to be violated, and I don't have any idea. But the fact that you do have an idea of what it means for me is-- it makes my skin crawl, and so I'm not gonna be sorry for making it stop.
[The concession does a lot to ease him. It gives him room to breathe, gives him sense this isn't all entirely hopeless. And so breathe he does, exhaling heavy.]
...I know. I ain't wasn't going to ask you to turn it back. It's done. I just wrote to make sure you were alive.
[He doesn't regret that. Not yet. Even if this has fucking sucked.]
If it could go both ways, I'd do it. I try to show myself for as much as possible to make even, but such things, it don't make a difference. There's only one means of easing fear and it's not one what anyone likes to do.
[He's silent a moment, before going on.]
Bucky, if what I tell you I know is more than you can take, I am sorry... but I won't be able to let you kill me.
[He doesn't know if that's what Bucky had in mind. Bucky doesn't want to be like that, not any more than he does, but he'd rather say it now in case worst comes to worst.]
[It says enough that Izzy already knows that there are things he'd kill to keep secret, even despite his wish to not be a killer any more, and he's completely tense as they finally get to his front door. It takes a while to unlock because of all the different locks but that's good, it gives him a few moments of silence to gather himself.]
What would be the point in killing you, anyway? Nobody stays dead here.
[That's not a good thing.]
Tell me what the method is for easing that, keeping you out without changes from Zephyr.
[The door opens and Bucky steps aside to let Izzy into his house.]
[It's a fair point, but it's not much of a consolation prize.
Bucky's hive is not something he'd call a hive from the outside. It makes him falter, looking petrified for a moment. It only helps that it looks far more like thirteen than it does the Capitol, but on the other hand, avox quarters weren't exactly stunning.
Inside is... better. It's lived in, shows signs of Bucky's time, little traces of him here and there. He takes it all in, trying to grasp what good he can.
It doesn't take him long for his eye to fall upon that poster of Steve, pulling his breath. The newly gained memories flash on through. For the most part, hindsight has done good for him. Not for memory of Steve.]
The only way to ease fear, brother, is to face it. I ain't got the power to take it away, only help them better understand. And I can only try and help if motherfuckers is being to let me.
[They both know that's not going to happen. He pulls his eyes from that poster, looking down.]
There's two options otherwise for what I already know.
[He watches Izzy carefully when he moves inside. Sometimes he'd like to take those posters down, they're reminders of someone who almost doesn't exist any more, but-- he never seems to get round to it. It's unusual, though, that Izzy's focus is arrested by Steve, most people seem to stare at the poster of what he used to look like.]
You know him?
[Or knew him.
The other options can wait for the moment, this all has to be taken at the right pace to keep it from exploding in ways neither of them want.]
[Does he know him? Now there's a motherfucking question. Had he been asked all the while ago, he might've said that he knew Steve was a punk what took risks unnecessary and it cost people. Now?]
...The world I was at, I'd set a rebellion in motion. I was leading it, meaning to take the Capitol down and let us free. A threat arose. Always knew at some point or other, I'd need to give something up if I was to keep them around me safe. I'd already set in motion the fail-safes for when that was to be. Mission came and we got the fuck to work, whole damn lot of us. Even the you I used to know got on being to help.
There was a warehouse. We were dismantling weaponry theirs, preventing annihilation. Time ran out, the Capitol came down on us. Most of our lot got out. Steve and I stayed behind for them, seeing what we could do for them, for us, but I think even he knew there wasn't really no out for us. We fought together until the very fucking end. I was sword and he was shield, but we couldn't kill them without bringing the Capitol down harder on us and we couldn't win fighting like that forever. They took us down.
[There's a distance in his eyes as he speaks, like he's seeing right through everything.]
That motherfucker got my very last spoken words. We lived, but they destroyed us. Was the second time they took my tongue and will. He kept the former, but they took his power away, and after that, they broke him. We understood each other like that, but it wasn't long before he was gone for good anyway. [He remembers the way it felt when Tony snapped on him. He hadn't been able to fight back. He wouldn't have wanted to.] I had promised. He wasn't supposed to get hurt. It was supposed to me.
[He shakes his head.]
I got all this memory back recent. Didn't have it before, when at you first showed up. I'm not sure if all such things count as knowing him.
A simple yes or no, or perhaps a small anecdote if he really had known him well in some other place, but not-- not this. He doesn't want to think of Steve taking a last stand that he knows he can't win, he doesn't want to think of him being bruised and bloodied and beaten, getting up each time and forcing himself on.
I can do this all day.
It makes him feel sick, and it only gets worse when Izzy goes on and describes what happened to them. Steve with his will taken away, that's pretty much his worst nightmare. He swallows hard, voice rough.]
[He grins then, and not happily. It's pained and it's furious and it's the sort what makes him taste blood in his teeth, burning his throat. It's the exact thing that got him willing to be a rebel, and make the sort of promises to surrender his soul in the first place. The sort of rage the comes when you've lost and all that's left is an itch in the digits for carnage.]
You bet your ass I did.
[He hadn't crushed them entirely. But he'd been on the track for ripping away all they knew. They weren't going to lose.
Not that it matters here. The grin twists into a grimace and he looks away again.]
You kept him strong. We both had our messages last to our allies before the end. I won't say much more if as you don't want. But you kept him strong, even when they made him weak.
[His eyes close.]
So, I'll say again, there's options twofold. You can try and trust me with all what I know. That's the first choice... or I can use voodoo upon myself. It'll put a hole in this thinkpan mine, or soul to be more apt, but as long as I keep note to myself not to heal it, I can block the memory in my mind.
[The word is quiet before Izzy moves on to the other options, swallowed up in the way the troll keeps talking. It's too much. Steve can't have lost his will, he can't have been tortured that way, and to hear that it was him that kept him strong until the end--
It's too much.
Something breaks in his chest and he can't seem to fight back the tears that slide down his face, looking open and stricken in a way he never usually does.]
[If Bucky had spoken more than mouthed the word, the conversation would have come abrupt and immediate end. Stop, being such a vague order (even when not really an order) it can mean any manner of thing.
But even missing that, he doesn't miss the sounds that follow or the way Bucky doesn't answer. His breath catches when he opens his eyes, and those eyes widen in turn.]
I... I'm sorry.
[His hands hover but he doesn't dare try and reach out or touch.]
[This is vulnerable in a way that he's been very careful not to be, not even around people that he actually trusts, and yet he can't seem to stop. His entire body is tensed up with the effort of attempting to control himself and he just... can't.
All he can see is Steve on the helicarrier, Steve bloodied and beaten and nearly dead, but refusing to give up. He can see the reprogramming machine and the impersonal faces of HYDRA, and now he can hear Steve's voice overlayed with his own, their screams the same. Is that what they did to his friend? They took away everything that made him Steve Rogers?]
He got his will back.
[It's half statement, half question, and wholly a plea. Please tell him that Steve recovered who he was.]
[There's a whole lot of ill making the haps in Bucky's head. Visions he no longer sees, panic he no longer feels, but it's not that hard to read without. It ain't a goddamn thing to guess.
Especially not with what Bucky speaks. He's not sure how to answer. It's a complicated motherfucking question with an answer all the more so.
But he doesn't want to see Bucky beg.]
Yes. [It's not a lie. It's not a lie, he tells himself] Yes, he... he fought hard. And he wasn't alone. He had you and Tony and Sam and... and everyone. He was still in there, more so than me. [He just needed more time than he got.
He doesn't say that.
He doesn't mention how the scars don't ever truly go away. They of all people know that. His arms fold over his chest, hugging as though to hold himself back.]
Truth told, Bucky, when I saw him, he mostly just worried about me.
[The damn fool. Saying, I don't want to get you into any more trouble, like it wasn't his own fault.]
He's never going to forget that somewhere out there, there's a Steve that's suffered through something he should never have experience with. He knows about the scars, he knows that Steve would never be the same even if he recovered his will, he knows all of this and it's why it's dug under his skin like steel hooks.]
Sounds... sounds like him.
[Of course he was worried about someone else, when was he not? That's what made Steve a superhero, it's what always had, even before the serum gave him the muscles to match his stupid outsized heart.
He scrubs a hand across his face and crosses to the poster of Steve, taking it down and folding it to give him chance to gather himself again.]
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[He's doing his best not to appear confrontational. He's got the matter sorted now and it's not like he's been around Izzekiel much to give him the chance to tell him these things, but it's still wary.]
So I made sure you couldn't.
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[No. He's getting frustrated. He doesn't need to be doing this. He breathes deep, focuses on Mituna, whom he can still feel.]
...Whatever. It's fine. [It's not. He hates it.] Just wanted to make sure you ain't wasn't dead. Only reason I can't feel someone's soul is usually being because they kicked the shit. I can't feel the dead. So, good you ain't that then. Hope it helps you.
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[He'd run off basically as soon as he'd found out that someone could be inside his head like that.]
I need to know what you've seen.
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His eyes close and he sighs.]
Aight. There somewhere you might feel safer talking on this?
[As opposed to out here in the open.]
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You can come to my house.
[At least he knows that's private.]
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[Bucky, at least, doesn't look like he's got plans to kill him yet. He's one of the few in the meadous what could handle a Bucky set on loose. Doesn't mean he wants to.
Still, if Bucky's willing to make on reason now, learning how much he knows might not immediately mean calamity.]
Whatever I tell, up in that hive of yours, that's between you, yo. No one's knowing what gets on said, on what things is in your nug, unless you got telling them. And I ain't going asking or making to help unless you want at me to. [Unlikely.] It's how I do by all, but them what's already on the ins deep with me. Goes easier on by everybody if I just act like I ain't know shit.
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You knew me before, you said, in the other place. And even if you didn't, the first thing you saw in me should have told you how little I would want anyone in my head. You should have come and told me right away so I could block you out, you didn't, that's not right.
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If I didn't want no one to look at me, would it be fair of me to ask them to blind their eyes? Not to chance the possibility of touch, so bind the hands? You can tell me it's different, but it ain't. This is a sense like any other to me. It's part of me and always has been, perfectly natural.
I'm not going to cut myself up like that. Not more than what I do and what I let already. [Like this.] You don't tell everyone what you can do neither. Most motherfuckers don't and having the ability to do something and acting on it is different things.
Besides, you asked me to treat you as a stranger. Claimed difference. What I knew of him then ain't relevant no more, by your own choosing.
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Okay, let's say I believe that. That there's a difference between being able to do something and acting on it, that means that when I ask what you know, the answer will be nothing... right? Because you haven't acted on going in my dreams or whatever the hell it is you can do.
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...The things what I can do, it ain't just stop at sensing. That's where at it starts. Those things, that's what I can choose or not. Entering your mind at all, I can choose that.
But. [Because of course there is one.] I feel what fear you feel. When you sleep, your dreams bleed on into my own soul subconscious. I can't stop that from happening personal. The only consolation I got for you is that I feel all everyone else too. I can't focus on one person singular so intently all the time. I make practice so I'm knowing what I feel is me and it's me what I keep at. Like background noise to a conversation had. I can't turn it all away, but I can try to turn my focusings else-ways. [Try, being key. Screams are a hell of a background noise when he's got nothing better to pay mind to.]
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[He shakes his head, trying to keep his calm in this despite how many of his buttons are being pushed.]
I don't care if it's just a sense, it's an invasive one. If I could see through clothes, even if I couldn't help it, it would be right to tell people so they could stop me seeing them naked if they weren't comfortable with it. Maybe it's a sense, but it's one that invades on others.
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That ain't make what I said less true. To cut it away means to cut at me. I do what I can to make sure everyone can feel as safe around me as possible. What that means is not telling people. You think I ain't know what would happen if everyone knew? You think they wouldn't sit me down and chop my digits bit by motherfucking bit, out of their own fear of me? You think that ain't a violation? You think this doesn't feel like a manner of controlling, like I don't understand what that feels like?
[He forces himself to take a breath, brings his hands to release.]
I am allowing you this, and John, because I know what it motherfucking means to you both. But you have no idea what it's like or what it really means for me so don't try and motherfucking schoolfeed me morality like you up and do. Especially when I've already been doing what I can to meet half motherfucking way.
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I'm sorry.
[He shrugs, tight and disturbed.]
I don't want you to be violated, and I don't have any idea. But the fact that you do have an idea of what it means for me is-- it makes my skin crawl, and so I'm not gonna be sorry for making it stop.
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...I know. I ain't wasn't going to ask you to turn it back. It's done. I just wrote to make sure you were alive.
[He doesn't regret that. Not yet. Even if this has fucking sucked.]
If it could go both ways, I'd do it. I try to show myself for as much as possible to make even, but such things, it don't make a difference. There's only one means of easing fear and it's not one what anyone likes to do.
[He's silent a moment, before going on.]
Bucky, if what I tell you I know is more than you can take, I am sorry... but I won't be able to let you kill me.
[He doesn't know if that's what Bucky had in mind. Bucky doesn't want to be like that, not any more than he does, but he'd rather say it now in case worst comes to worst.]
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What would be the point in killing you, anyway? Nobody stays dead here.
[That's not a good thing.]
Tell me what the method is for easing that, keeping you out without changes from Zephyr.
[The door opens and Bucky steps aside to let Izzy into his house.]
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Bucky's hive is not something he'd call a hive from the outside. It makes him falter, looking petrified for a moment. It only helps that it looks far more like thirteen than it does the Capitol, but on the other hand, avox quarters weren't exactly stunning.
Inside is... better. It's lived in, shows signs of Bucky's time, little traces of him here and there. He takes it all in, trying to grasp what good he can.
It doesn't take him long for his eye to fall upon that poster of Steve, pulling his breath. The newly gained memories flash on through. For the most part, hindsight has done good for him. Not for memory of Steve.]
The only way to ease fear, brother, is to face it. I ain't got the power to take it away, only help them better understand. And I can only try and help if motherfuckers is being to let me.
[They both know that's not going to happen. He pulls his eyes from that poster, looking down.]
There's two options otherwise for what I already know.
no subject
You know him?
[Or knew him.
The other options can wait for the moment, this all has to be taken at the right pace to keep it from exploding in ways neither of them want.]
no subject
...The world I was at, I'd set a rebellion in motion. I was leading it, meaning to take the Capitol down and let us free. A threat arose. Always knew at some point or other, I'd need to give something up if I was to keep them around me safe. I'd already set in motion the fail-safes for when that was to be. Mission came and we got the fuck to work, whole damn lot of us. Even the you I used to know got on being to help.
There was a warehouse. We were dismantling weaponry theirs, preventing annihilation. Time ran out, the Capitol came down on us. Most of our lot got out. Steve and I stayed behind for them, seeing what we could do for them, for us, but I think even he knew there wasn't really no out for us. We fought together until the very fucking end. I was sword and he was shield, but we couldn't kill them without bringing the Capitol down harder on us and we couldn't win fighting like that forever. They took us down.
[There's a distance in his eyes as he speaks, like he's seeing right through everything.]
That motherfucker got my very last spoken words. We lived, but they destroyed us. Was the second time they took my tongue and will. He kept the former, but they took his power away, and after that, they broke him. We understood each other like that, but it wasn't long before he was gone for good anyway. [He remembers the way it felt when Tony snapped on him. He hadn't been able to fight back. He wouldn't have wanted to.] I had promised. He wasn't supposed to get hurt. It was supposed to me.
[He shakes his head.]
I got all this memory back recent. Didn't have it before, when at you first showed up. I'm not sure if all such things count as knowing him.
no subject
A simple yes or no, or perhaps a small anecdote if he really had known him well in some other place, but not-- not this. He doesn't want to think of Steve taking a last stand that he knows he can't win, he doesn't want to think of him being bruised and bloodied and beaten, getting up each time and forcing himself on.
I can do this all day.
It makes him feel sick, and it only gets worse when Izzy goes on and describes what happened to them. Steve with his will taken away, that's pretty much his worst nightmare. He swallows hard, voice rough.]
...I hope you made them pay.
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You bet your ass I did.
[He hadn't crushed them entirely. But he'd been on the track for ripping away all they knew. They weren't going to lose.
Not that it matters here. The grin twists into a grimace and he looks away again.]
You kept him strong. We both had our messages last to our allies before the end. I won't say much more if as you don't want. But you kept him strong, even when they made him weak.
[His eyes close.]
So, I'll say again, there's options twofold. You can try and trust me with all what I know. That's the first choice... or I can use voodoo upon myself. It'll put a hole in this thinkpan mine, or soul to be more apt, but as long as I keep note to myself not to heal it, I can block the memory in my mind.
no subject
[The word is quiet before Izzy moves on to the other options, swallowed up in the way the troll keeps talking. It's too much. Steve can't have lost his will, he can't have been tortured that way, and to hear that it was him that kept him strong until the end--
It's too much.
Something breaks in his chest and he can't seem to fight back the tears that slide down his face, looking open and stricken in a way he never usually does.]
no subject
But even missing that, he doesn't miss the sounds that follow or the way Bucky doesn't answer. His breath catches when he opens his eyes, and those eyes widen in turn.]
I... I'm sorry.
[His hands hover but he doesn't dare try and reach out or touch.]
I didn't mean...
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All he can see is Steve on the helicarrier, Steve bloodied and beaten and nearly dead, but refusing to give up. He can see the reprogramming machine and the impersonal faces of HYDRA, and now he can hear Steve's voice overlayed with his own, their screams the same. Is that what they did to his friend? They took away everything that made him Steve Rogers?]
He got his will back.
[It's half statement, half question, and wholly a plea. Please tell him that Steve recovered who he was.]
no subject
Especially not with what Bucky speaks. He's not sure how to answer. It's a complicated motherfucking question with an answer all the more so.
But he doesn't want to see Bucky beg.]
Yes. [It's not a lie. It's not a lie, he tells himself] Yes, he... he fought hard. And he wasn't alone. He had you and Tony and Sam and... and everyone. He was still in there, more so than me. [He just needed more time than he got.
He doesn't say that.
He doesn't mention how the scars don't ever truly go away. They of all people know that. His arms fold over his chest, hugging as though to hold himself back.]
Truth told, Bucky, when I saw him, he mostly just worried about me.
[The damn fool. Saying, I don't want to get you into any more trouble, like it wasn't his own fault.]
no subject
He's never going to forget that somewhere out there, there's a Steve that's suffered through something he should never have experience with. He knows about the scars, he knows that Steve would never be the same even if he recovered his will, he knows all of this and it's why it's dug under his skin like steel hooks.]
Sounds... sounds like him.
[Of course he was worried about someone else, when was he not? That's what made Steve a superhero, it's what always had, even before the serum gave him the muscles to match his stupid outsized heart.
He scrubs a hand across his face and crosses to the poster of Steve, taking it down and folding it to give him chance to gather himself again.]
Fine. Tell me what you know.
[He needs to move on from this.]
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cw: suicidal ideation
cw: suicidal ideation
cw: suicidal ideation
cw: suicidal ideation