X. FREIGHT CAR.

opinions on, do i, what is my:

character in general: uh, to begin with, a disclaimer: i don’t like the books, but i’ve read it and it’s all i’m familiar with in terms of shadowhunter, so that’s where all my knowledge stems from. but i know clare is not... the bestest person out there, so you know, it turned me off, and biased my perspectives of her characters as well. but alec, i really adore him apart from how at the beginning he seemed to be a tool for clare to emphasize on clary’s position in terms of jace’s romantic stance, if that makes sense. but as the story went on, there was growth going on with alec as a person and i remember having been fond of him as i read along. no longer reading now, but still liking the character overall.

how they play the character: there’s not much that i can gauge this measure from seeing that we haven’t really roleplayed much, but i do adore the portrayal that lea has shown so far. alec as a character is filled with resolutions, especially as a head of the institute, which i believe is the canon from the show that i don’t follow. but just the writing of the character alone makes me understand the character even when i’m not following the show, so i believe it speaks volumes.

the typist: lea is someone i’d like to talk to more, for sure, as we have each other on discord but haven’t conversed much. so far, though, lea has been a sweet pea.

follow them: totally.

roleplay with them: we have two threads on which i owe, and while i’m a slow snail trying to get by with my drafts, i’m definitely looking forward to replying to the threads that we have, both the mission and sparring.

ship their character with mine: um, yes. totally. talked this out with lea and we’re going to that direction, coughs.

opinions on, do i, what is my:

character in general: erik is a well-rounded character that has a lot of potential to become expanded in terms of background, and he’s always caught attention when it comes to being an antagonist. in my opinion, he is one of the best marvel villains ( is he a villain, though, even? because he’s so well-rounded with his own agendas and motives that he’s become more of an antagonist for me instead of full-fledged villain; or well, maybe i don’t know the definition of a villain myself ). also, there’s a whole history unexplored for him, and it’s always a subject to be delved into for roleplaying purposes, so props for a good dimensional character that marvel manages to bring to life.

how they play the character: um, this is going to be flowery and you’ve had it coming. there are many different interpretations for erik and falsedking is definitely one of my favorites... if not legitimately my favorite since dani explores so much with metas. dialogues and actions are spot-on, making me feel like i’m interacting with the actual erik from the movie. there are many aspects that dani has managed to develop, including his background with his mother as well as his educational and military backgrounds. the headcanons are, as always, top notch, and definitely not something that anyone wants to miss out on.

the typist: danika is one little shit of a daughter.

follow them: uh, sadly... i do?

roleplay with them: yes, yes i do even when falsedking is one of the slowest snails on earth. it’s okay, though. time begets quality in this case. and i owe a reply that i haven’t touched on so there’s that as well. but roleplaying with dani has been one hell of a ride, like it’s definitely something that i enjoy, experience-wise, as her writings are packed with good a+++ actions.

ship their character with mine: eyes emoji. she said “gay” and i said “yes” and that’s how it all started, folks. yes... we’re shipping. buckerik for life.

there’s a phantom taste of rust against the tip of his tongue, wilting, wafting. the forefront of his mind refuses to interlink with the name spat by the stranger, synapses firing to find connections only to find the blankness that always stares back at him. the abyss of void is all that he’s familiar of, clustering his thoughts with the weight of uncertainties that he knows well how to wield. here’s to the sepia of this ghost: he doesn’t remember the stranger by the name anymore, but there’s something visceral, something feral that tells him that he does know the person. once upon a time, perhaps, away from this blank slate. everything in his system, however, pleads for him to resist. so he does. “i don’t know whom you’re talking about,” he says, voice carefully tuned to monotony. “move.”

on some days, he wants to stop running. on some days, he deserves to keep running.

yet, he’s half a man as much as he’s half a machine now. halves are what he needs to be acquainted with, proportions of his own rationale following both routes. one, he needs to ensure his safety. another, he needs to ensure his humanity. the paths don’t often collide in an intersection, and so, he’s scared. scared of what would become if he’s swallowed whole by his survival instinct. worse, what would become if he’s swallowed by his visceral programming. the book in someone’s hand, wishing for naught but a world’s destruction. the cold of triggers against his index. again, and again, and again. he’s scared.

but he’s heard of a man who might be able to help. he’s uncertain as to how much, but it’s worth a shot. hell, everything, even with the most miniscule of a chance, worth a shot. the longer he lives with the possible provocation still planted deep within his head, the longer the world is within the target of an imminent danger coming from a machine. so, he lifted as many times as he could, ensuring that he would make it to a trip to the united kingdom. he didn’t bother with the ticket for a trip back. stumbling upon the door of the wizard, he doesn’t knock if he should knock, so he stands there, across the road. idle, as if waiting for a miracle to happen. and then, he crosses it. in front of the door now. to knock, or to not?

history is a bittersweet thing. happiness and desolation go hand in hand with the memories steve finds himself reminiscing over from time to time. what he experiences now is of the former. the dulcet sound of a woman’s voice crackles against the record player. it soothes him in ways that nothing else can. steve is sat on top of a neatly made bed, palms dusted with the remnants of charcoal. staring back at him is the portrait of a face that lingers in his mind even when he is resting quietly in the room adjacent to his. james has a profile that he could sketch in many variations: this one being soft due to wide eyes and the upward curve of his lips. the pad of his thumb gently traces over the mouth, smile only lasting as long as it takes steve to figure out he smudged the drawing. it is nothing to fret about, though. instead of huffing, he hums along to the tune and meticulously mends the lines into perfection.

a knock at the door has him jumping out of his stupor and he is scrambling out of bed ( sketchpad left open and forgotten ) to get to the one thing that separated him from james. when he swings the door open, an apologetic smile adorns his lips. ❛ i didn’t disturb you, did i? the music isn’t too loud? ❜ it is instilled in him to worry about the well-being of the man in front of him though steve thinks that if he were posing as a problem, this meeting would be unfolding differently. so, he shuts the door without an ounce of hesitation, pausing at the sight of the small smile that he wears and oh      it is much more rewarding to witness in person than it is on paper. the question catches him off guard but it saves him from staring so he appreciates that distraction for what it’s worth. ❛ i don’t know if you could call it dancing, ❜ he mumbles, a hint of embarrassment rising despite the fact that his inexperience with such things was forgotten. ❛ swaying is a better term for what we did.      wasn’t often but a few times, sure. why? ❜

he doesn’t comprehend the essence of this moment, extracted from the perpendicular thoughts of the man he cannot recall. still, he believes that some things are visceral, mouth preserving the words unsaid in his previous life. perhaps this is why falling in love with steve has been easy; perhaps this is why falling in love at all has been easy. after seventy years of being locked, and thawed, and wiped, and killed all over again, he thought that it would be impossible for him to feel anything that wasn’t a semblance of fear, an aftermath of traumas inflicted over the decades in servitude to being misguided ghosts. but after all, isn’t the heart made of muscle memories, too? and the firing synapses, as well. it doesn’t take him a complete recollection to love a man that once used to reign in his chest, as he was told. it doesn’t take him a complete recollection to love a man that once used to capture his ellipses in the mouth.

    “alright, alright.” stephen takes a deep breath. how does one even do these things? in his years, he’s been way better at treating treating people than he’s ever been at establishing emotional connections to them, be it in form of a friendship or a bond of a different nature. stephen strange cannot say he’s an expert at all of this. even the less is he an expert in mending hearts or minds that have been bent or broken by circumstances such as bucky’s. he’s peeked into the past. curiosity kills the cat, yes, though stephen didn’t anticipate what he would see. and what he has seen leaves him bitter still.

     the sorcerer clasps bucky’s shoulders with both his hands. “i’m not exactly one to decide who’s worthy of what or not,” he says, “sometimes, things just happen and it’s better to go with the flow, so to say.” stephen tries to manage a smile, then thinks of something to change the rather dark topic this conversation has taken up. “you know about mcdonald’s, right? how about we go and talk about existential problems over a big mac?”

naivety is not a string that coils around his neck; he’s never, by any measure, a silhouette of ignorance when it comes to this. strange is one of the conundrums extended by the universe to the point where understandings become so brittle on his end, but it doesn’t mean it’s impossible. comprehension doesn’t come easy, but it comes nonetheless. and last but not least, stephen becomes another memento for the sanctum that he encloses himself in, and while he hasn’t filled the void of the parentheses completely, he understands just this much: he’s not worth it. a former assassin. a war criminal. a toy soldier.

and it feels like this: the copper in his mouth is nothing compared to what’s coming. the ghosts threaten to spill out of his skin, dripping from the pores it injects goose bumps along the column of his spine. still, it’s in his veins to embrace the weight of atlas on his shoulders. too much to bear, too much to lose. he doesn’t know if he can live without the nightmares now, not knowing how. the trigger words might have been extracted, but the traumas remain. scar tissues that web around his collarbones in the shape of hands that smother. here’s to the culture of a man transformed into poltergeist: he doesn’t know how to live without the sleepless nights anymore. foreign, as foreign as he is to this soil. and for that, he doesn’t believe he can impose more burden onto the people that owe him naught. not even erik, especially not him.

he looks at erik, still adrift in slumber. the dawn in wakanda has always been beautiful, but it’s nothing compared to the sunset. looks up, and looks back down, to the peace that streaks erik’s face in his sleep. he sneaks back into the comfort of the duvet, lying his head carefully on the pillow next to erik’s. thinks about the fact that he would never belong here, or anywhere of the matter. he sighs, and nuzzles erik’s neck, pressing a kiss to wake erik up. upon having the other stir from sleep, he looks at erik apologetically. “i’m sorry i’m waking you up so early,” he starts, dithering for a moment. “i have... something to say. i... uh—” again, voice caught in his throat as he tries knitting a lattice of words enough for him to convey meaning without hurting erik, even when he knows it’s within the realm of impossibility. “i have to go. from wakanda.”

he’s unsure as to how to proceed with this, but at the moment, with their hands intertwined, the moment simply blurs into a tangle of uncertainties. he isn’t certain if he’s worth all the trouble the other man has gone through in order to reach this sliver of peace shared between them, and he looks down, avoiding eye contact. all the danger pushed aside, they’re now safe... except he hasn’t known the definition of safety for the longest time. asks himself the same question all over again, replaying it in his mind until it becomes a radio static. eventually, he braves himself to look up, gaze fixated on the man’s lower lip, and inquires, “am i worth all this?”

there’s a sound of old music that seeps from the gap under the door of steve’s room, and he hesitates for a moment. there’s no creak to his footfall as he’s learned to be a ghost, so steve perhaps wouldn’t have noticed his presence in front of the door. he listens, intently, hoping that it would jog something, anything. none, but there’s an itch that he cannot cure, so he knocks on the door, expecting steve to open the door for him soon enough. the tune is soft, gently caressing his mind with the atmospheric intents dated back in 1940s, and he thinks, for a flitting moment, that he can hum along to it even when he believes he hasn’t heard the song before. when steve opens the door, sidestepping to let him in, he invites himself into the room. smiles at steve in a manner that he himself doesn’t truly understand, but upon having the door closed behind them, he looks at steve expectantly, and asks, “have we... ever danced?”

pieced together like a bent and broken puzzle, he finds himself looking at his fingers. they moved without instinct, but with thought which was unlike everything else about him. new skin coated what he believed to be dna wrapped around his being like a blanket dressed for war, it was what he knew — all he was intended to know. to be the second coming was something that he’d not thought of, no, he was’t programmed that way. there’s an empty place in his chest but he doesn’t miss it, he knows nothing about the pain of a beating heart and the way it seeks restitution, this is something he’s glad for, he’d seen it during acclimation into civilian world —– not once did it end well. no. he spends more time trying to understand these emotions that threaten to crawl onto his skin like frenzied spiders, all he knows is what he’s been taught —- and what he’s witnessed from his handler. the soldier bares no resemblance to his clone on the inside – at least, this is what he imagines. he doesn’t recognize the city they are in — it seems dark, almost dirty in a sense but in their given positions one, on the edge of the bed, the other leaning cautiously against the cheaply made desk, he can see out the window. beyond the curtain lay a life he’d never thought of, one that still was a struggle to bring to the front of his purview, and it seemed his handler struggled with it as well. he can feel it, feel the way the other’s entire being drifts into something else. a memory — perhaps?? yet one more item to add to the list of matters the clone will never understand. he wasn’t real, his flesh and bones may have been, but he’s been engineered for war and it’s all that he can think of. after all — they were on the run and yet all he can recognize is how numb he felt to all of it. just another thing that he’s sure that he’ll never understand, but he watches his handler carefully from the corner of narrowed eyes, he watches him, hoping that he’ll be able to show him the way to be just like him — maybe better.  it’s after long moments silence that words break the barrier of every thought process computing through his head. the words enter his mind almost stiff and along with them his whole body goes rigid. mention of diverting from the plan does that to him, again, it’s all he knows and it’s to the point where even the sensation of sheets feels foreign to him, his fingers still trying to adjust to the sensation of softness as it ripples over the pads of matched fingertips. something new, at least — but it’s after a moment’s thought that the clone looks up at his handler with a blank expression his gaze flickering over to the knife. strange — such a useless act for a man that he knew didn’t need to practice with the weapon. it was a tool and nothing more, just like them, or at least.. they were.  ❛  why?? ❜ his communication skills are fine, he recalls the doctors speaking on this multiple times, we removed the problem areas with the primary. which implied he was the secondary.  still, sweeping that off to the side was a foul sensation building in the empty spot in his chest he’d considered before. it beat, sure, enough focus he can hear a pair almost at the same tempo one…seemingly faster than the other as he moves with an unfounded, untouchable grace towards the window to close the blinds shut. the city he’d come to examine faded from view – and he felt nothing for it.  ❛  why james??  ❜

the city is now a radio static. there’s a crackle that comes with the glitch, before it fades off the view entirely as his clone pulls the blind down, enclosing them in the darkness that’s only lit by the artificial lights flitting through the gaps. he’s hyper aware of the fact that there is a pair of himself right now, fitting like syllabus of missions into the emptied puzzle containers in their minds. there are spaces that feel too void now that there is no one to eliminate, no pest to exterminate. the only ones, perhaps, are hydra themselves. vigilant over that very fact, the core of its truth contained inside him along with the process that is hydra’s schematic blueprint. in order to catch up with them, hydra has to alter their plans. the endgame is a change. and he himself understands that in order to escape from hydra, he has to remain unpredictable, his movements rather jumbled to the point where the cacophonies distract hydra from their actual noises. this is a game where two can play... where two must play.

he cannot opt out. not even when he has a liability; there’s no way that he can leave his clone behind when he’s attached on the hip, in all its mess. there’s no logical explanation to this, a clusterfuck of impulsive decisions made on last minute calls, in a rapid succession. he hadn’t felt this reckless before... but then again, he hadn’t felt anything for a long until his clone came along, reviving his long-lost will to escape. realizing it, even. that was quite a leap, in retrospect. and now that the enigma moves about in front of him, he doesn’t know what to make out of it. there’s a myriad of inquiries posed at himself upon hearing the questions enunciated. why? that’s one hell of a question. a perfect one. perhaps it’s the fact that it’s been a while since the last wipe that he could recall some pieces of his identity, and he wants to give some of the shard to his clone, noticing what it means for him to have an actual company after a long period of thaw, wipe, kill.