gevurah: (gail simone's at it again)
nobody likes kate kane ([personal profile] gevurah) wrote in [community profile] capeandcowllogs2012-08-07 10:51 pm

(no subject)

WHO: BUCKY and KATE
WHERE: Bucky's apartment
WHEN: evening of 8/7
WARNINGS: maybe angst.
SUMMARY: blond friends get ported out and Kate checks in on Bucky.
FORMAT: prose to start then whatever.


Carol's port out had come as an unpleasant surprise and as selfish as it might have been, Kate had felt genuinely bad for the tension she stirred up and almost wanted another chance to talk to her again. A voice in the back of her head had jeered, "Great job, Kate Kane. Another bridge you burned." But if she wasn't coming back a second time, then it didn't do any good to obsess on it for long. She would decide on a souvenir to bring back for Carol, drop it off at Avengers mansion when she got back and that was that.

At some point, it had occurred to her she hadn't heard from Bucky in a while. When she thought about asking Kate for a number, she remembered the state of his microwave at the apartment and figured a cell was out of the question. Stopping by unannounced didn't feel too right, but she head straight up to his door and knocked anyway.
deadthenred: (ten.)

[personal profile] deadthenred 2012-08-08 05:42 pm (UTC)(link)
Bucky didn't own a cellphone, but he did have a landline. It came with an answering machine he was just barely sure how to work. He needed to, he did fix-up odd jobs for the building. He needed to be take knocks at the door, for that, too.

"Oh, hi." Bucky was surprised to see Kate standing there, after the swing. Tired, was what he felt, and that he felt strangely. It wasn't late. "You can come in if you want."
deadthenred: (don't ask me i blew myself up)

[personal profile] deadthenred 2012-08-09 02:44 am (UTC)(link)
"I've had one," he said, his memories tracing the outline of the military brig, mistakes he had made, a while back. It seemed like a long time ago, all of a sudden. Most of the time, people told him things were longer ago than he felt. "It wasn't neat enough." He said this matter of fact, because jokes were always better when you say them matter-of-fact. And Bucky was pretty sure that he was joking.

He went to the kitchen, and rummaged through his icebox. "You want anything?"
deadthenred: (are you sure this is bullet proof)

[personal profile] deadthenred 2012-08-09 04:47 am (UTC)(link)
"I've been—," he stopped for a second, pulling himself out a beer. If Kate wasn't gonna drink, it was her loss. He paid for it. "Well, the Dodgers are only a game and a half back, I think they can take it."

It was a swing and a miss, really, a cheap distraction, and he knew it. Bucky was never very good at coming out and saying what was churning him on the insides. After a moment though, after wrenching the bottlecap off with the corner of the table, he spoke again.

"Gwen's gone." There, that was part of it.
deadthenred: (ten.)

[personal profile] deadthenred 2012-08-09 05:43 am (UTC)(link)
"That's alright," he said, taking a swig of his drink. "It's not like this's new to me."

Losing people, he meant. He'd been doing that his whole life.
deadthenred: (eighteen.)

[personal profile] deadthenred 2012-08-09 06:23 am (UTC)(link)
"Who says I'm not? Fine with missing them, I mean." He'd gotten used to it. He didn't… not feel sorry about it, he didn't not miss them, Bucky just didn't talk about it most of the time. It fit better when he closed up.

It was time to change the subject. "What about you?"
deadthenred: (the french have good beer right?)

[personal profile] deadthenred 2012-08-09 06:47 am (UTC)(link)
"You can't call me cagey, Kate Kane," he said, lighter now, close to smiling. "Well, you can, but you gotta admit, it takes one to know one."

He came out of the kitchen and sat down on his sofa. More relaxed, it seemed like. It was obvious enough that he didn't want her to leave.
deadthenred: (ninety-seven.)

[personal profile] deadthenred 2012-08-09 07:10 am (UTC)(link)
"I'm not gonna push. I know people need their secrets." And he was being cagey himself, he wasn't sure if he wanted to pour himself out. He never was sure, when it happened, it just sorta happened.
deadthenred: (twenty-four.)

[personal profile] deadthenred 2012-08-09 05:17 pm (UTC)(link)
"Yeah, I heard about that." Bucky'd known Carol, but not as well as Carol seemed to know Bucky, and that made him a bit jumpy. Still. He could sympathise, he could really sympathise.

"It kills me, how this place can take us from anywhere, anyhow, and right back again. And we don't get any say in it. What a rotten deal."
deadthenred: (the most melancholy of explosions)

[personal profile] deadthenred 2012-08-09 09:17 pm (UTC)(link)
"I dunno that there is a point. Not one I'd understand." Bucky thought maybe time-travelling robot monsters from outer space might think quite a bit differently than he did. It was the only way to make sense of something that didn't make much.
deadthenred: (are you sure this is bullet proof)

[personal profile] deadthenred 2012-08-10 06:49 am (UTC)(link)
"I don't think anything could explain them."

After a second, he added— "The Major hasn't come back yet." That was what'd really been eating at him. Gwen being gone was just gnawing at the hole that'd already been there.
deadthenred: (twenty-one.)

[personal profile] deadthenred 2012-08-10 04:22 pm (UTC)(link)
"Maybe not. He was usually real showy, he could never stay underground for too long. But yeah, he's gone into hiding a few times. He's smart until he's stupid."

The thought of the Major going underground was a lot worse to him than him being permanently dead. So what Kate said cheered him up, some. Probably not in any way she meant to.
deadthenred: (forty-three.)

[personal profile] deadthenred 2012-08-11 03:53 am (UTC)(link)
"I'd try to rope them in, if I could." If he couldn't, he'd kill them himself, and he wouldn't apologize. Bucky didn't say that bit out loud, but it dripped unmistakable in the silence.

What they did to the Major, though, it was a whole lot worse than killing.
deadthenred: (look what i found in my leg!!)

[personal profile] deadthenred 2012-08-11 04:55 am (UTC)(link)
"There's no telling, you're right. But I'd be more likely to kill him if I thought it would stick."

There. He said it— he meant it too. God, though, he felt a sadness, to say it out loud.
deadthenred: (eighteen.)

[personal profile] deadthenred 2012-08-11 05:37 am (UTC)(link)
"I wouldn't be doing it for anyone. Someone like that, someone who murders people and sets the whole damn thing to music, sometimes you've only got a second to take 'em down." He exhaled, heavily.

"It wouldn't be the first time I killed a Nazi." He could remember the first time— he was sixteen, and for a second it was like his mind didn't know what his wrist was doing. It caught up to him, though. And for a clean day, no matter where he looked, all he could see was dirt.

Here was the scariest thing James B. Barnes knows about killing: it gets easier.
deadthenred: (twenty-one.)

[personal profile] deadthenred 2012-08-11 03:39 pm (UTC)(link)
"What you hafta do isn't always what you want to do. S'what duty is."

That probably wasn't how the Army would put it. But it's what Bucky had always told himself.
deadthenred: (fifty-one.)

[personal profile] deadthenred 2012-08-12 01:15 am (UTC)(link)
"Yeah. I know— I know there're a lot of people, who would stop them."

That was the problem. They hadn't just stopped him, had they?
deadthenred: (ten.)

[personal profile] deadthenred 2012-08-12 04:39 pm (UTC)(link)
"Yeah. Yeah, I think so."

He'd always turned out fine before, right? It was just… old stuff, old feelings he'd managed to swallow, seeping back in. The war was over. A long time ago. But Bucky couldn't help but keep fighting.
deadthenred: (this?  this is my over the moon face)

[personal profile] deadthenred 2012-08-13 02:27 am (UTC)(link)
"Yeah, but I've never lived in Gotham," he joked, easing his way back into his easier self.

He only nods at Kate's last comment.
deadthenred: (nineteen.)

[personal profile] deadthenred 2012-08-13 11:16 pm (UTC)(link)
"There's a lot of overlap," Bucky replied. "But maybe not so much as people'd like to think."

Of course, the worst the Nazis did happened behind the fog of war. No one was fighting them because of their camps, they were fighting 'em because od Pearl Harbor. Because Uncle Sam told them to. But not because they believed Hitler was deep-down evil.